Star Birth
by thatsakitkat
Summary: Obi-Wan and Anakin must deal with the fallout of Anakin's first heat. Omegaverse. Mpreg. Dark.
1. Chapter 1

**Warnings: omegaverse, mpreg, mutual noncon, other consent issues, unhealthy relationships, self-harm, abuse, minor-character death, murder, dark!anakin, torture**

So this started out as a short story and became one of my longest fics yet. I am still working on it, but updates should be coming regularly-I hope to update every week.

I am still a beginner of SW stuff and I've only seen the movies. Everything else I pilfer from Wookiepedia. So, if something doesn't seem right, give me a few hundred parsecs worth of creative license to tell this story, please :) Many liberties with the Force were taken.

I've used a much more literal and devout interpretation of the Jedi with a lot more emphasis on the cult-like aspects than canon (this is relevant later in the fic). The Order can get pretty unsavory here. Other religious points are directly inspired by real-life elements and doctrines used for the purpose of this story. No offense is meant to anyone of any persuasion.

This is a **DARK** story. This fic involves torture in later chapters. The sexual non-con in this story is of a mutual sort but there are more consent issues involved afterwards that, while they aren't sexual, are still very unhealthy. This is not a romantic story or one focused around sex as much-or even one focused around a/b/o dynamics, which are portrayed a little differently than the usual standard (mpreg is still a major theme)

Thank you so much for reading!

* * *

"Oh, Anakin," Obi-Wan whispers, touching his padawan's distressed face. His fingers must be ice on Anakin's hot skin—the boy pushes into his touch.

Anakin's twisted up in his robes, partway pulled off and revealing his slim chest, covered in a light sweat and heaving.

His precious scent infuses every particle of their room.

The energy around Anakin is leaden. Obi-Wan feels his estrus in the Force.

The entire room throbs with the call of life. Obi-Wan's never sensed such a powerful heat before. If he wasn't a Jedi he'd be helplessly susceptible.

Obi-Wan has to carry him bundled up in his robes to the refresher. He brings Anakin into the bath and sits down with his molten body.

Obi-Wan turns the sanistream to a cool mist. The spray quickly clouds the air, falling gently on Anakin's flushed skin and creased brow.

Slicking Anakin's lax lips with the moisture, Obi-Wan fights a sudden urge to weep.

 _You don't deserve this_ , he thinks. _I cannot help you. In this you are so very alone_.

But he is _here_ , and he has to get ahold of his emotions.

He has to resist this.

Anakin moves. Obi-Wan looks down at him, and he can almost feel Anakin returning to consciousness in the Force—the energy flares just a bit brighter.

Anakin opens his blue eyes to his burning world.

"Master," he says loudly, blinking rapidly. The cold mist of the sanistream has formed water droplets in his long lashes. "I'm so _hot_."

Anakin whimpers and Obi-Wan holds him tighter.

"What is this?" Anakin closes his eyes and licks his lips. "What's wrong with me..."

"You are in heat, Anakin."

"Heat...?"

"I'm afraid so."

Anakin tries to open his eyes fully, but they cross and twitch. The fever has him tight. "Master," he murmurs. "I need... I need..."

Obi-Wan shushes him. Of course he knows what Anakin had been going to say and he is dauntingly aware he shouldn't be here with him. Obi-Wan's an alpha, and though he's above acting like an animal, the smell of heat is inescapable and it is begging him to act as such.

Does he leave Anakin here? Does he take him to the Healers? Obi-Wan has to tell the Council, Yoda at least—surely this has something to do with the Prophecy of this boy from the desert, on fire with the heat of his homeworld.

" _Master_." Anakin grits his teeth. Every muscle in his body tenses. His hands lift.

A small bolt of fear erupts in Obi-Wan. Anakin's waking a bit out of his fever, and his powers could crunch him in an instant.

Obi-Wan feels Anakin's swelling rage in the Force. Furious at not getting what his body demands. Anguished at what he's missing.

All at once Obi-Wan has to let go of him and stand. As he hurries out of the refresher he hears Anakin cough.

"Master?"

"I'm going to get you some help, Anakin."

What was the locking code to the door again?

"Master? Don't leave me. Please, don't leave me."

"I'll be back, I promise you." With this final placation, Obi-Wan puts a sealed door between them.

He breathes deeply. The world seems so different with Anakin's smell gone. This is what he needed.

He has no qualms about locking Anakin in their room. All of the necessities are accounted for—if Anakin will think to eat or drink.

Obi-Wan will not be gone long.

* * *

Obi-Wan leaves the Halls of Healing perturbed at the Jedi's lack of progress. At every turn, there is nothing the Circle of Healers can do. They do not want Anakin in the medical wing because it isn't set up for _events like this_ and Anakin may _disturb the other patients_.

Perhaps he shouldn't be surprised. It is no secret the Order sidelines its omegas to the Corps more often than not. Only Anakin's prowess in the Force and the Prophecy hung over his head has kept him from that dead-end track.

And his Master, of course.

Obi-Wan considers now, going to the Council. That is of course, what he should do. But the matter is so personal. Is it right to even speak of such a thing? Wouldn't it be a betrayal to his padawan? Obi-Wan has already shared too many of Anakin's weaknesses and is aware he's done his own part in intensifying the Council's disfavor towards his wayward student.

But they must already sense the burgeoning Disturbance in the Force. What measures would they take to stifle it?

Unable to bear the thought of leaving Anakin alone, unable to share such an intimate secret with the Council, Obi-Wan has to go back to their room. He won't abandon Anakin.

It has been perhaps twenty minutes between locking this door to unlocking it now, and the smell lies over Obi-Wan as if a heavy blanket.

In these hot walls he could lose his very mind.

He finds Anakin still in the cold sanistream.

 _"Master!"_ Anakin wails in relief, and Obi-Wan feels a stab of remorse for having left him when he sees tears spill down Anakin's flushed cheeks. He's been in here too long—his padawan's gold hair is dark and soggy from the mist, his robes likewise wet.

But when Obi-Wan helps him up, Anakin's burning as if a hot coal.

He turns the cold sanistream off and switches the warm air of the sonic dryer on.

Anakin blinks blearily in the harsh air, swaying on his feet. As Obi-Wan goes to steady him, Anakin leans into his touch.

Anakin tilts his head down and looks up at Obi-Wan through the long fans of his eyelashes.

It's a look that's not unfamiliar. It's been swung Obi-Wan's way many times from Anakin, but he had dismissed such seemingly erotic looks as his own imagination.

But there is no mistaking it now.

Through Anakin's eyes, his very being challenges Obi-Wan to mate with him.

 _This torture will end in a few days, and then all this nonsense will be over_ , Obi-Wan tells himself.

There's nothing to do but set Anakin in his bed. Obi-Wan's alarmed to see Anakin's already coated in sweat after just stepping out of the dryer.

"Am I going to die, Master?" Anakin asks.

Obi-Wan looks at him sharply. "No. You will not die, Anakin."

"I'm burning," Anakin says. He blinks slowly and strains to concentrate. "You set me on fire..."

Obi-Wan furrows his brows at this, but dismisses the words as claims from a feverish mind. Anakin's locked away in a volcanic world even as he lies free on his bed.

Obi-Wan will never know that world, and for that he's thankful.

He stays by Anakin with water and those sweet fruits from the conservator he enjoys. Most of Anakin's consciousness has burned away again—his eyes have slipped closed and he's murmuring soft and indistinct.

It's late now. Obi-Wan can barely see Anakin in the darkness that's lowered on top of them. He slowly moves to his own bed, letting his robe drop in the process.

He must get all the rest he can.

Obi-Wan lays his head down and closes his eyes, but he does not fall asleep until Anakin's pleading ends.

* * *

It is no lighter when Obi-Wan wakes.

He turns his head and focuses on Anakin's bed. There his golden form sits, rocking in place.

Anakin's robes are nowhere in sight.

"I'm thirsty, Master," Anakin says when he senses Obi-Wan's awake, sounding far more present than at any other time tonight.

"Should I be glad for this momentary return to rationality?"

"I want water," Anakin pleads.

"It's there, right next to you."

Obi-Wan sits up and moves the covers off himself. He doubts he'll sleep a hand's worth of hours the next few days.

He uses the Force to turn the dial at the other end of the room and watery illumination spills over their beds.

Anakin clutches himself tighter at the light and stops moving. His slim arms are wrapped around his chest, and now Obi-Wan sees the sheen of sweat on his smooth, sunkissed skin. Anakin's padawan braid glimmers like the sweets he's fond of eating.

Obi-Wan has to look away from him, and finds himself checking the door's indicator light to see if it's definitely locked. His biggest fear is Anakin getting out and running amok the Temple.

Obi-Wan doesn't know where this fever will take Anakin. He knows, intellectually, what heat _is_ , but he's never actually witnessed it firsthand.

He's never seen Anakin sicker.

 _Omegas don't die from heat_ , he scolds himself. _It's natural. It passes_.

But this isn't a normal heat. It's the Chosen One's. The most powerful being in the Force.

"Master," murmurs Anakin.

Obi-Wan gets up and takes the cup of water.

When he comes round Anakin, the boy looks up at Obi-Wan again in that sexual manner. "I can smell you," he says.

Obi-Wan clears his throat. "Drink," he urges, offering Anakin the cup.

"You smell so good, Master. It makes me want you to _fuck_ me over and over."

Obi-Wan's eyes flare. Anakin's never said that word in front of him, that vulgarity from the Outer Rim.

Anakin takes the water.

"Don't speak to me like that, young one," Obi-Wan snaps as Anakin drinks his fill in long swallows.

Anakin lets the cup clatter on the floor. "It _hurts_ ," he whines, and shifts onto his knees.

Obi-Wan turns his head from this exposure and removes Anakin's hands from his leggings when they fist in them.

"Master, I'm _burning_ ," Anakin begs. "You have to help me. I need you. You're everywhere." Anakin pants. "Alpha, _alpha_."

"You must get control of yourself," Obi-Wan says, but it's like talking to an animal. It's some inner demon that's broken out of whatever binds there had been.

Obi-Wan feels Anakin's desire in the Force. It's bled into every strand.

He hopes no one's listening closely. But those strong with the Force would hear Anakin's song, no doubt. And there were so many of them in this Temple, so close.

Perhaps leaving wouldn't be so reckless. A half-world over for a few days. There, there was no Council, and in the lowest levels Jedi were but myths.

"I don't think we should stay here," Obi-Wan tells him, turning his eyes to the pleasant view of Coruscant's cityscape instead of Anakin's body. He writhes now, wet in every way, and Obi-Wan wonders about the Prophecy.

* * *

Fifty klicks away and a few hundred levels below the Jedi Temple and Obi-Wan feels better. They did not have to travel far to be nobody. In plain tunics and leggings, they aren't even Jedi.

Not that Obi-Wan hadn't taken their weapons.

"Master," Anakin says next to him, nearly lost in the wind. "Don't drop me."

"You're safe, Anakin," Obi-Wan assures his delirious mind, and tries to soothe him in the very Force, made a red jungle by Anakin's heat.

This was the best option. Once this fever is waited out, they'd return to the Temple, and Obi-Wan would explain everything that he hadn't in the brief message he'd left Master Yoda.

Their speeder sails far from Core Square's clutch. Anakin's braid whips his face and Obi-Wan's eyes tear. They go further still, until he can no longer sense any Forcefuls at all, not even Yoda.

Besides the quiet breath of life below them, the Force is nothing but the hot coil of Anakin's cycle.

When Obi-Wan lands the speeder, he shifts his shoulders and he relaxes. He's stolen Anakin from the Temple perhaps, but Anakin is his padawan and Obi-Wan knows what's best for him. In this smoggy substratal spread, no one but him could now feel this new Disturbance in the Force.

A sum of credits later, they have themselves a hotel. A glitbiter crosses their way and blinks curiously at them in all the pre-dawn light that still manages to seep down here.

The smell of another alpha burns Obi-Wan's nostrils.

Anakin raises his head and his own scent strengthens.

"You will ignore him," Obi-Wan says to the twitching dweller, lifting his hand.

After several moments of uncomfortable staring, the man repeats, "I will ignore him," but nonetheless scans Anakin's body before he turns reluctantly and walks away.

Obi-Wan watches his retreating form until it disappears, frowning—it had taken more effort than usual to convince such a feeble-minded individual.

"Don't worry," he says to Anakin. "There aren't many of them here."

Though he knows worry is not what Anakin feels.

He's still staring in the direction the alpha disappeared.

"Anakin," Obi-Wan says sharply.

Anakin starts and whines.

Obi-Wan hadn't meant to sound so angry. It'd snapped out of him before he could think.

 _What has taken over me_ , he wonders, taking Anakin's arm to pull him into their retreat.

The door is only a flimsiplast-thin sheet of metal, but it locks at the very least.

Anakin's scent fills the cubed space like a cleansing fire. Obi-Wan blinks heavily at the smell and has to go to the refresher.

Though there's no major duties being unattended to, there's a strange mounting anxiety in his breast for having left the Temple—he rarely shows himself in the lower levels of the city outside missions, and the Council would have sensed the Disturbance of Anakin's heat if they didn't know exactly what it was. In his message, Obi-Wan hadn't exactly mentioned _why_ Anakin could not stay in the Temple.

He can only hope they trust him enough to leave them unmolested.

Obi-Wan rubs his beard. There'd been reasonable cause to leave, after all.

He gives Anakin more water and a plain sandwich he's brought with them. Anakin chews messily, struggling to drag his sweat-stung eyes open. He seems calmer now, and Obi-Wan doesn't know why.

Heat must come in waves.

"I'm so tired, Master," Anakin mumbles.

Obi-Wan uses his thumb to clean crumbs off his lips.

Anakin steps into his arms. Obi-Wan nearly pushes him away, given the circumstances, but Anakin just rests his cheek against his shoulder and wraps his fingers gently in his tunics.

Obi-Wan allows himself to hold him.

Anakin turns his head on his shoulder and Obi-Wan feels his breath touch his neck, the expansion of Anakin's ribs. "You smell wonderful, Master," Anakin murmurs, and Obi-Wan must let him go.

Anakin travels to the window. Obi-Wan doesn't think he really sees out of it.

Obi-Wan takes his boots off and lies back on the bed closest to the door.

"Wake me if you need anything," he tells his padawan at the window, but Anakin gives no sign of having heard him.

Obi-Wan lets his exhausted eyes close. These events will be clearer once he's rested.

* * *

Obi-Wan dreams of sand on his lips and the desert suns of an oddly green world blazing through his fingers. It's heat that he feels upon awakening, his neck and chest damp.

It's much hotter than when he fell asleep. His lips are salty when he licks them. It isn't normal for Coruscant to be this warm.

When Obi-Wan opens his eyes, he blinks at his unfamiliar surroundings. And then he remembers he's no longer in the Temple, and nothing is as it was.

The source of the heat is of course the fevered creature he's brought with him. Anakin is lying in the other bed, naked again, wet and curled in a trembling pile of flesh.

Obi-Wan checks his comlink. Blessedly, there's no news.

Anakin's scent stacks in his lungs. It's even stronger than before. It lies over Obi-Wan's skin like an intoxicating spice-laced salve. His fingers clench tight as a poisonous seed of arousal plants in his gut.

 _Focus_. It's just been so long since he pleasured himself. Indeed, he can't remember when that was...

No, he must be above this!

The sheets rustle and he looks over at Anakin. Obi-Wan's eyes meet his. His padawan has risen from his bed and now towers over his own.

A cold flash of fear strikes through him as Anakin's rage and fire press on his mind. "Obi-Wan," he says fiercely, " _Obi-Wan_."

"Anakin," Obi-Wan says. Anakin's eyes are only an animal's. It's a wonder he can even form his name. "You should rest, Anakin."

 _NO_ , Anakin says, though his lips don't move. Obi-Wan hears it between his ears, and it's as if he's thought it himself.

Then he can think nothing.

Obi-Wan wrests his mind from Anakin's grip. The swell of power Anakin's wielded against him threatens to throw his very sanity over the brink into black space. He casts away the chains from his mind, but it leaves him frozen.

Anakin descends on him.

"No, Anakin!" he shouts, shoving at Anakin's chest as Anakin's fingers claw into his shoulders, as Anakin tries to push him down onto the bed. "Get _off!"_

So near, all he can smell is Anakin's madness.

It frenzies for him. It howls for him.

And Obi-Wan starts to burn with him.

"Anakin," he pleads. "Stop. Stop this, stop this, _stop this_."

Anakin's hands rip the ties off his leggings. When Obi-Wan tries to stop him, Anakin lunges for him, spittle flying from his mouth.

Obi-Wan rolls to the side and off the bed, but Anakin chases him down.

And he has Obi-Wan's lightsaber in his hand.

Before Obi-Wan can call it back to him, Anakin rears up and drives the base of it down into his temple.

The world flickers and dies.

* * *

Pain.

Obi-Wan clutches his head and blinks the blackness of oblivion away. It hurts to just use his eyes' small muscles to open them.

What happened? He remembers his padawan's heat, he remembers taking a speeder, air rushing past his ears with Anakin beside him, then he had slept.

"Anakin?" he groans. He rolls over. The surface he's on is hard and cold—the floor, why is he on the floor?

Obi-Wan's mind revs sluggishly through a scattered pattern of events he can't make sense of.

He turns to the Force for answers. It's so much lighter than the last time he touched its currents Obi-Wan has to strain to reach it. In its smooth waters he senses Anakin's signature.

Obi-Wan's mind launches in a dizzy spin towards his just to bounce rudely off a block Anakin's erected. Obi-Wan would be happy Anakin's cognizant enough now to put up this shield, but instead his entire being rages with the need to—

Burn.

Obi-Wan gasps from the ash in his throat. Anakin sits above him, and Obi-Wan sees the hilt of his own lightsaber crash towards his face, filling his vision with its cold metal. He feels it impact his skull all over again and flinches on the floor with a shout.

In the same painful present, he knows what Anakin's done.

Obi-Wan feels down between his legs and finds his length naked and sticky to the touch.

" _Oh no_ ," he says, struggling to his feet, "Oh no no no no. Oh Force, no."

 _Anakin_ , he wails at the barrier between them. Anakin, what have you _done?_

He doesn't find Anakin in the hotel room and he doesn't find Anakin in the refresher. Even now Anakin's signature is fading beyond the block he's put him behind.

Obi-Wan pulls up his leggings and goes to the door. The lockpad is cracked in three places, throwing up sparks. Obi-Wan has to lift the ruined door with the Force to open it.

It's dark again. Force knows how long he laid on that floor, how long Anakin—

He doesn't know where Anakin's gone, but at least he can move in the direction he senses his presence heading. Perhaps Anakin's traveling back to the Temple.

Obi-Wan quickly takes out his comlink. Though he's not expecting an answer, his heart still revolts when Anakin doesn't respond.

Obi-Wan checks out of the flophouse and steps under a shadowy store roof to record a message.

"Anakin," he says, "You must tell me where you are. Though an awful thing has come to pass, know you are still my padawan and I forgive you. It was not your choice. I need you to answer, Anakin. I won't be returning to the Temple without you. If I have to check every level—I'll track you down eventually."

Obi-Wan tries to smile but can't quite muster it. "May the Force be with you, Anakin."

He sends the message to Anakin's comlink from his own, but then the small device suddenly beeps and its indicators flash red.

He stares at it.

OFFLINE.

Obi-Wan tries to send it again and once more his comlink flashes that damnable color.

OFFLINE.

"Damn it all, Anakin!"

He hurries to the speeder.

* * *

Mace Windu prowls across the length of the Council room floor. "What do you mean, he's gone?"

"Anakin _will_ return to the Temple," Obi-Wan insists. "He's just—"

"You took that boy," Windu hisses, "you took that boy while he was in _heat_ to the undercity and you _lost_ him?"

Obi-Wan shifts on his feet. "Anakin hasn't left this planet. I still sense him. I believe he's hiding in the lower levels. We shouldn't doubt he'll return soon, but if he doesn't, I ask the Council dedicate resources to aid my search."

"Face it, Obi-Wan," Saesee Tiin says, "it's been long enough. He destroyed his comlink. Omegas aren't suited to be Jedi. We have to view this move as an act of apostasy."

" _No_ ," Obi-Wan pleads. "His cycle was so much worse than either of us could've expected, and we all felt it. Anakin needs time."

"How much time?" Windu growls.

Obi-Wan sighs. "He will return, Mace. Anakin won't leave me."

"Attached, he is," Yoda agrees.

"That is for the better right now," Obi-Wan hurries to say.

Yoda's aged eyes turn towards him. "Let Skywalker go, Obi-Wan cannot."

Obi-Wan looks away. "Don't we all still believe he is the One?"

"What I sensed in the Force that night wasn't balance, Kenobi," Eeth Koth observes. "These unfortunate events will come every month the rest of his life. They'll only bring madness to the Order."

"I'm sure the others will not be as powerful and Anakin will learn control. He is just a young padawan. He hasn't even undergone the Trials yet. We shouldn't give up on... the Prophecy, just because of these developments."

"Fine, Obi-Wan," Windu says at last. He looks around the room and lets out a rough sigh. "The Council grants you the next ten days to retrieve Skywalker. But you will do it alone—we won't spare any more resources than we have to on this wild bantha chase."

Mace looks at him. "But, Obi-Wan, if you fail to find him, if he fails to come out of hiding, no more concessions will be made for him. Anakin will be expelled from this Order, prophecy or no prophecy."

Obi-Wan bows his head. "Thank you, Masters. I will leave immediately."

* * *

By now, Anakin's presence is directionless. It is so faint Obi-Wan has to struggle to grasp it.

He first flies back to the flophouse to orient myself at Anakin's last location then takes an airbus to the larger district nearby.

But he doesn't find Anakin there.

And he doesn't find him in any of the midcity clubs or any of the medcenters stapled around the residential blocks.

On the sixth day, on little rest and fading hope, a certain unease buds in Obi-Wan's mind—over and over again he's tried to reach past the block Anakin's put between them. Its roots have grown deep in the Force. Obi-Wan wonders if it has the power to keep him from Anakin. Perhaps it's distorting his perception of distance.

In Obi-Wan's scattered naps, he still hears that _NO_ echo in his skull, said by the animal heat had made of Anakin.

He remembers the way Anakin had nearly overtaken his very sanity. He's never felt such enormous Dark power.

Once Obi-Wan considers he'll never find Anakin unless his padawan wishes it, there's no more sleep to be had. He spends the nighttime hours in Coruscant's bowels, baying for him in bars and brothels. During the day he looks for him in the skies.

But Anakin never gets closer.

A day before Obi-Wan's search must end, he has to weep. He gathers what little of Anakin's energy he can still feel and mourns for what's been taken from them both. He cries for the wasted years of training, he cries for Anakin's lost future, he cries for the madness that's caused this. Most of all, Obi-Wan cries for the generations of young Jedi to come who will never know balance.

 _I have failed you, Master_.

* * *

On the morning of the very last day, Obi-Wan decides to board a starliner. Maybe he's been wrong and Anakin _has_ gone off-planet.

He no longer trusts his own senses.

As Obi-Wan's signing for a tour of Corellia, his comlink starts chirping rapidly. He taps to ignore it. It'll be Windu courteously letting him know he must return to the Temple tomorrow or face his own expulsion. It's the compassion Obi-Wan's come to know, but anger burns his insides.

If this damn world wasn't so prejudiced against omegas this wouldn't have happened—if the Circle of Healers hadn't stonewalled him, if the Jedi didn't wrongly shun such a gender, if the Council was capable of more than the modicum of care they've shown his padawan all these years—

 _Beep_. _Beep_. Obi-Wan doesn't answer.

Even if he found Anakin right now, there's no guarantee the Council wouldn't strip him of his apprenticeship when he faced them. It wasn't explicitly in the Jedi Code to forbid omegas from training, but there were always other avenues in which the Order made its distaste known.

Obi-Wan is _not_ going to let Anakin rot in the AgriCorps.

His comlink goes off again. Once again Obi-Wan cancels it.

His ire turns from the Council to himself. _Stars_ , who was he to believe he could take the situation into his own hands? Despite the trappings of the Order, it was _him_ who struck the sparkstick by taking Anakin from the Temple.

The next call flashes an urgent yellow and Obi-Wan finally accepts it.

Mace Windu's voice flickers over the line. "Is there any reason you didn't pick up the last three times?"

"The ship's instruments must be causing interference."

"Really." Mace is quiet for several moments. "Why are you on a ship?"

"I've been pole to pole and Anakin's Force signature hasn't strengthened. It tells me he's planetside, but he gets no closer. It doesn't make sense, but I have to consider the possibility he's gone off-world." Obi-Wan smiles humorlessly. "Shall I send you my robes?"

"Obi-Wan," Mace says, "Anakin is here at the Temple. He returned this morning."

A bubble of elation bursts in Obi-Wan's heart. "Truly? Anakin is there?"

"I suppose you were right after all. Now, you will return to the Temple immediately. I've called a meeting of Council members this evening. You will bring Anakin before us then."

"How is he?" Obi-Wan persists. "Is he uninjured?"

"We expect your arrival shortly. May the Force be with you, Obi-Wan."

* * *

Even on the Processional Way of the Jedi Temple where he supposedly has returned, Anakin's signature shows no change.

It _is_ the work of the strange mental structure, then. But at last, Obi-Wan no longer has to try to reach Anakin that way and he's able to draw back from its dubiously Dark energy.

He strides into the Temple on a cloud. The happenings of the last two weeks seem an age ago.

In fact, all thought leaves him once he finds Anakin.

Anakin is standing on the sandy lip of the pond in the meditation chambers. The slack of his dark robes has trailed into the deep blue water, and his head is lifted towards the sunlight spilling over the lush greenery through the transparisteel ceiling.

Obi-Wan quells everything he desires to say as to not interrupt Anakin's peaceful moment and crosses the grass to stand by his padawan's side.

He can scent Anakin now. He smells entirely lovely, soaked in the sun. It's as if the fires of heat have completed him and yet, made him anew.

As he considers Anakin, his mind instinctively races to touch the being holding his attention.

He rebounds off the monolith Anakin's placed between them.

And the peace pops.

Anakin tenses and drops his head, his eyes darting around as if frightened.

"I'm sorry," Obi-Wan says.

With a swift turn, Anakin moves to leave. "Anakin—" Obi-Wan reaches out and catches his robes.

Anakin fervently snaps out of his hold. Water from the hem of his cloak dashes Obi-Wan across his knees.

"Don't touch me, Master," Anakin warns, his breath hectic.

Anakin doesn't look at him.

"Where were you?" Obi-Wan asks. "Where _were_ you?"

"Does it matter now?"

"It matters to the Council, who we have to stand before just a couple hours from now," Obi-Wan tells him.

"So they know. You told them?" Anakin's voice trembles.

It's plain to him what Anakin's speaking of, but Obi-Wan had no plans to discuss _that_ so soon.

An uncomfortable, painful silence thickens between them the longer he takes to speak. "I only shared the information relevant to finding you as quickly as possible," Obi-Wan says at last. He tries for a smile. "But here you are."

Anakin looks disturbed. "I am going to be expelled, aren't I?"

Obi-Wan frowns. "That's not very likely, Anakin. This was an isolated incident and will not happen again."

"Isolated incident?" Anakin repeats. "I know what I am. The same thing will happen again in a couple weeks."

Words click uselessly in Obi-Wan's throat. "Perhaps it will not be so strong, next time," he settles on, loath to discuss such private matters and unsure now, of what exactly they're speaking of.

Force, _does_ Anakin remember what happened? How can Obi-Wan even begin to articulate such a question?

"I'm sorry, Master," Anakin says, as if an offering. "For worrying you. I should've returned sooner. I was—I was lost."

It certainly isn't the truth, but Obi-Wan represses the urge to pry. Even that short admission seems to have drained Anakin where he stands, and from the dark circles under his eyes, Anakin's slept no better than him the past weeks.

Obi-Wan nods and crosses his hands within his sleeves. "Let's hope that is all the Council will want to know. And, Anakin..."

Anakin finally brings his eyes to Obi-Wan's. A large orange butterfly has landed on his shoulder, its pronged antennae pondering Anakin's braid.

"...If there are consequences for this, you know I will always be by your side."

Obi-Wan smiles at him, but his assurance doesn't touch his young padawan.

Anakin's eyes fill and his face crumbles. A sudden sob erupts from his lips and cracks painfully in Obi-Wan's ears.

"Anakin?" he questions, automatically reaching out to grasp his shoulder.

But Anakin spins away from him, the butterfly taking wing in his wake and alighting on Obi-Wan's little finger.

Obi-Wan waves the insect from his hand and follows Anakin's quick strides out onto the open terrace of the chambers.

Vines as thick as trees reach even out here, and Obi-Wan nearly trips over them in his haste.

Anakin is already at the bronzium parapet, and through the blinding glare of the low sun, Obi-Wan sees his long fingers find a grip in its smoothed top.

Alarm blares in him.

Anakin brings a foot up onto the wall, but that's as far as he gets. In a blink, Obi-Wan is there, securing his arms around Anakin and hauling him off the edge and away from the long drop off the Temple's tallest tower.

" _Force_ ," Obi-Wan gasps, holding Anakin tight to his chest. His shocked heart kicks at Anakin's spine. "What in Sith hells were you _doing?"_

"Master!" Anakin cries, heaving in his arms. "I'm sorry, Master! I'm _sorry!"_

A bitter trickle works its way down Obi-Wan's throat. He could never be so blessed that Anakin would simply forget the state he left Obi-Wan in on the floor of that flophouse.

Such wretched sobs leave Anakin that Obi-Wan's own tears wet his padawan's shoulder.

"Stars have mercy," he begs, and the warm Coruscanti wind blows.

* * *

Obi-Wan doesn't let him go for many more moments. Anakin's plaintive sobs dry up, and they stand there on the Temple's terrace underneath the emerging cover of night.

Obi-Wan feels Anakin's warm hands cover his where they're locked at his waist. "Master," Anakin says in his dripping wet voice, "How can you touch me after what I've done to you?"

"You've done nothing to me."

"I _did_ , Master. I—"

" _You've_ done nothing, Anakin. It wasn't your choice. The madness you didn't ask for, we both fell prey to it." Obi-Wan closes his eyes. "I should never have taken you from the Temple."

"No, _I_ should've been stronger."

Anakin pulls away from him. He stalks back into the meditation chambers and Obi-Wan follows, silently. He can feel Anakin working up into another nova.

"Why do I have to be an omega?" Anakin hovers by a bunch of arallutes. For the misery in his voice, the touch of his fingertip along the purple petals is gentle. "Every month I'll—I'll have to be locked away. Every month I'll _burn_. Every month for the rest of my life. How can I be a Jedi now?"

Obi-Wan's comlink whistles, notifying him of the impending Council meeting. He turns the alarm off, and exhales.

"How can I bring balance?" Anakin's asking the flowers.

"Best not to share your doubts with the Council," Obi-Wan says. He straightens his robes. "Are you ready?"

Anakin scowls. "They couldn't even give me a night's rest before interrogating me?"

"Mind your feelings. I'm in dire need of sleep as well, but we must endure this."

"And a bath."

"What?"

Anakin looks at him. Obi-Wan can almost see a smile tucked away on his lips. "And you need a bath, Master. Your robes are filthy."

Obi-Wan looks down at himself. "Oh. Right."

He starts to laugh, but it boils in his throat when he glances at his padawan's face and sees his small smile has fled and left nothing but shame behind.

"I'm ready," Anakin says.

* * *

"Anakin Skywalker," Mace Windu says. "Isn't it fortunate you decide to turn up just before we were going to consider your disappearance an act of desertion."

"Yes, very fortunate," Obi-Wan says. "Isn't it, Anakin?"

"Very fortunate, Master," Anakin says plainly, staring ahead at Windu.

Obi-Wan steels himself against a pinch of guilt, but he has to show he still holds control over his padawan—now more than ever.

"Obi-Wan's told me you snuck out of the hotel while he was on an errand," Mace says, reciting the only version of events Obi-Wan will ever tell him. "He came back and you weren't there. Why didn't you stay where you were put?"

Anakin's eyes flick towards Obi-Wan curiously, and Obi-Wan fights to keep his face carefully impassive.

At length, Anakin says, "The heat fever was really bad that day. I wasn't thinking clearly anymore. In fact, I barely remember it."

"Do you remember where you went?" Tiin asks impatiently.

"I wound up in the Zi-Kree sector."

Obi-Wan wonders if that's the truth, and Anakin had been ten kilometers from the Temple the whole time.

"What'd you do there?"

"I was confused," Anakin says. "I don't—I don't know. I think I was trying to find my way back to the Temple."

"You _think?"_ Mace's stare hardens. "In heat, on the streets of the Crimson Corridor? Meet anyone _interesting_ wandering around?"

Anakin flushes.

Obi-Wan almost rebuffs such an inappropriate question, but finds himself waiting for Anakin's response.

"Some slythmonger tried to help me and took me to a clinic, but they wouldn't let me stay there. There was nothing they could do."

Obi-Wan doesn't doubt that.

"But," Anakin continues, "if you are asking what I think you are, the answer is no."

Is it?

"But then again, you do hardly remember," Mace points out, his dark eyes seeming to burn a hole in Anakin.

"You turned off your comlink," Koth adds.

"No, I didn't." Anakin furrows his brows. His eyes circle the room. "That thing hasn't worked right since it got fried while I was doing repairs on my lightsaber."

Mace leans forwards and steeples his fingers. "When did your... _fever_ , end?"

"Well, yesterday. But it took me more time to find transport. I came back as soon as I was able, Masters, I swear."

"You're saying it lasted the whole _ten days?"_

Members of the Council shift and mutter.

Obi-Wan steps forward. "We have to assume its... longevity is the product of it being his first, and Anakin's strength in the Force."

But Mace just keeps staring intently at his poor padawan, colored a deep red and staring at the patterning on the floor.

"Do you remember your master taking you from the Temple?" Windu asks Anakin.

"Some," Anakin says.

"Why do you think he did that?"

Anakin looks over at Obi-Wan. "Well, I must've caused a Disturbance."

"That wasn't your decision to make," Adi Gallia says to Obi-Wan. "Why didn't you consult the Council?"

"I did leave a hologram for Master Yoda," Obi-Wan says, noting his silence with some curiosity.

"Yes, you did," Mace says, "to tell him you were taking your padawan halfway across the planet. You must have a very different definition of _consult_ than this council, Obi-Wan."

"It was getting worse, there was no time to—"

"Master did the right thing," Anakin interrupts. "Staying would've caused chaos. Everyone in the Temple would've suffered all those days because of me. No one would've been able to listen to the Force. While you wanted to waste time with meetings, Obi-Wan was doing what was best for the Order as he always has."

"Anakin," Obi-Wan says sharply. "Mind your words."

But he can't help but be proud of him.

"Obi-Wan doesn't get to decide what's best for the Order," Mace says, looking at Anakin but not speaking to him, of course.

"He—" Anakin starts.

"I understand," Obi-Wan cuts in. "I was in error."

"But," Mace continues to Anakin, "it seems the only option _was_ to remove you from the Temple. And, besides the wasted time your absence caused, it seems to have bore no ill consequences. Would you agree with that statement, Obi-Wan?"

"Yes, I would," Obi-Wan says evenly.

"Does this council agree?" Mace asks the other members, and gets slow nods from all of them. Yoda is still staring at Anakin pensively, his claws worrying at his gimer stick. "Fine. Well, now it comes down to making sure this incident doesn't repeat itself."

"Skywalker must be sterilized," Koth says. "It's the only real option."

Obi-Wan gapes at him. "No, that is _not_ the only option!"

"Then he must be exiled."

" _No_."

"It's okay, Master," Anakin placates him, but Obi-Wan hadn't missed how Anakin cringed at the suggestion of such mutilation. "Maybe it's best I am sterilized."

"That is completely unnecessary." Obi-Wan shakes his head.

"I may have a third recourse," Shaak Ti says. She hasn't spoken through this whole meeting, but her voice rises above their arguing.

"What is it, Ti?" Mace asks.

"Suppressants are still sold on the black market, are they not?"

"And that is where they should stay," Obi-Wan says. "They are too dangerous."

"It seems to me they would be worth the risk," Ti says to him, not unkind, but rankling Obi-Wan all the same.

"Hardly so," he says. He folds his arms. "I doubt they would have any chance of working on a Forceful, let alone one of Anakin's nature."

"With respect, Obi-Wan, you have shot down every solution thus far," Plo Koon observes. "Do you have one of your own?"

Obi-Wan lets out a long breath through his nose, looks at Anakin, and says nothing.

Mace rubs his bald head. "I don't like this, Ti. Those drugs haven't been legal since Corellia tried to secede from the Republic."

"Well, we must not sterilize the One," Ti says fiercely. "He is _omeyen_ , that is the Will of the Force, not something to be fixed. I offer a different solution if it must come to that or exile, but I continue to be disappointed to see the way humans treat their _omeyen_ , Mace. Know that."

Mace turns his head from her without response or even a scoff, and seems oddly discomfited.

Anakin steps forward. "I'll try it."

Obi-Wan closes his eyes. His brave padawan.

Mace looks dubious. "And now we put our hope in some drug from the undercity?"

"There's no real risk," Anakin says. "If it doesn't work and my next cycle does come... I consent to being detained and sterilized."

Obi-Wan sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose. No, he would not let them maim his padawan in that way. He would leave with Anakin before that came to pass.

"And if it kills me," Anakin continues, drawing Obi-Wan's eyes sharply, "then your problem is solved just the same, isn't it?"

* * *

"What you told the Council wasn't entirely truthful, was it?"

"Not now, Master," Anakin says tiredly. He only takes the time to remove his boots before he gets into bed.

"Well," Obi-Wan sighs, "I am sure you'll tell me the truth eventually. And you will take down this wall between us."

Anakin closes his eyes.

There's nothing more for Obi-Wan to do than shower and get into his own bed.

He watches Anakin for a time and listens to his breath. Anakin's turned onto his side and hugs his pillow tightly to his chest, his padawan braid a gold thread on the sheets.

Obi-Wan stares at Anakin's sensuous lips and slim fingers. In every idle moment, his mind picks and scrapes at that black scab, that dark lid. It wants what's underneath, and now it pries its edge up and looks down into the dark.

 _I've been inside him_.

That thought's never arrested him more than it does now. Was he the first? How long had Anakin used his body so?

Obi-Wan rubs his fingers together. That wetness he'd found on his member, he can almost feel its stickiness.

He can smell it.

Obi-Wan turns away from Anakin quickly and pulls the covers tighter around himself.


	2. Chapter 2

Exactly a week later, a shipment arrives at the Temple. Obi-Wan's roused by the chimes of the annunciator and finds a medical droid at their door. It refuses to let Obi-Wan accept the small silver case and reiterates its utmost personal purposes before zooming past him to Anakin's bed.

After much pestering, Anakin finally wakes. It's been harder to raise him in the mornings and he's taken to going to bed several hours before Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan worries about the energy he's expending to maintain such a thick wall between their minds.

It's unnatural.

"[Inject] the contents of [one] [hypo] every [forty] [days]," the droid's explaining, after Anakin's sleepily assured it that yes, it was fine for Obi-Wan to stay in the room. "If you forget a dose, please visit the [Halls of Healing] so we may [assist] you."

"Are there any side effects?" Anakin asks. "Besides possible death, of course."

"Don't speak that way, Anakin."

"Unknown," the droid says after a moment spent searching its databanks.

Anakin unlatches the case. Obi-Wan peers inside.

On a bed of blue velvet rest ten hypos of luminescent lavender liquid. Steristeel caps cover their needles.

"Are they supposed to be that color?" Obi-Wan wonders.

"[Telsix suppressants] are commonly the color [humans] refer to as [purple]."

Anakin moves his fingertip over the injectors. "All they will do is end my cycle?"

"The interference with your [estrus cycle] will cause [significant] [hormonal shifts]. The extent of such effects cannot be known at this time." The medical droid's round head whirrs as it spins. "The [use] and [production] of [Telsix suppressants] has been [prohibited] on [Coruscant] since [four hundred ninety-nine] [years] ago."

"I am to inject it myself?"

"[Yes]. The [Circle of Healers] concluded this [route of administration] would be most [convenient] considering your [missions] may not always grant you access to the [Halls of Healing]."

The droid extends one of its many arms. "Would you like me to [assist] you?"

"That won't be necessary," Anakin says, though he looks apprehensive—needles have never been his strong suit. "Thank you, you can leave now."

"This should be overseen by the Healers, Anakin," Obi-Wan says, "in case something goes wrong."

"I promise to report any complications," Anakin continues to the droid, ignoring him.

The medical droid tinkers out of the room. "Have a [nice] day!"

Once the door's sealed, Anakin slowly picks up one of the injectables from the case, revealing a holotape underneath.

Anakin doesn't bother with it, but when he sets the case on his bedside table, Obi-Wan pulls it out. It plays the simple instructions of injection and contains a calendar.

"Obi-Wan."

He looks at Anakin and sees he's taken the cap off the injector, baring its gleaming needle. Anakin's staring at it, pale. The shot vibrates in his trembling hand. "I—I need you to do it, Master."

"Oh, Anakin," Obi-Wan sighs. He takes a seat next to his padawan and carefully stills Anakin's hand before extricating the hypo from his grip.

Obi-Wan pulls Anakin's sleeve up his arm and brings his elbow over his knee. He turns on the injector's vein viewer. "Perhaps there'll be a less frightening method of administration in the future."

"I was expecting a lecture on how fear leads to the Dark Side."

"Would you like one?" Obi-Wan asks him as the viewer works and Anakin's veins spider up against his skin, glowing a bright cyan color.

At his lack of reply, Obi-Wan brings his eyes back to Anakin's face.

He's shocked to see a tear sliding down his cheek. "Anakin, it's quite all right—it will only take a moment."

"I know, Master," he whispers.

"It won't hurt much."

Anakin nods.

Obi-Wan doesn't think Anakin hears him. There's nothing left to do but ready the needle at the biggest vein branching down Anakin's arm.

Obi-Wan breathes in deeply through his nose, and then slides the needle into Anakin's skin.

Anakin inhales sharply beside him. His fingers splay and bunch into a fist.

"Steady," Obi-Wan says to the both of them.

He slowly pushes the plunger down and begins the luminous liquid's descent into Anakin's body.

Gooseflesh spreads over Anakin's arm and he shudders next to him. "It's cold, Master," he whimpers. "It's really cold."

At the same time Obi-Wan can feel Anakin's skin warm and tingle beneath his other hand.

He's at a loss at Anakin's distress. He stops and asks, "Is it hurting?"

"No," Anakin says.

"We can stop and go to the medical wing, Anakin."

"No! Just keep going. It doesn't hurt, Master, truly. I shouldn't look at the needle. I'm sorry..."

"Quite all right," Obi-Wan mutters. What in the blazes is going on with his padawan? He's no stranger to Anakin's frequent bursts of emotion, his feelings so tender and bare they could be stirred to riptides by the smallest of perceived slights.

But the image of Anakin's foot on the edge of the spire hasn't left him.

Had he truly planned to jump?

"You do not need to feel guilty for anything, padawan," Obi-Wan says softly. "We must accept what we cannot change or lose ourselves in the past. Guilt serves no one and ruins us from within."

Obi-Wan listens for a response, a bratty remark about how he had a lecture to give after all, but hears only the soft sounds of Anakin sniffing.

Finally, the last of the substance leaves the syringe and he can take the needle from Anakin's arm.

Anakin gasps wetly.

"All done," Obi-Wan tells him. "Let's hope it works."

Anakin takes back his arm and clutches it to his heart, his tan skin pale as he tracks the empty hypo in Obi-Wan's hand.

Obi-Wan disposes of the used injectable and latches the case closed. If these Telsix drugs are successful, he supposes he will be the one to store them on his belt. Anakin had expressed his dislike of needles as a child, but Obi-Wan hadn't known it had grown into such a phobia.

"How do you feel?" he asks Anakin, studying him carefully. "Is anything amiss?"

"No, Master," Anakin tells him. "I feel fine."

And then Anakin lies back on the bed, lifts the covers back over himself, and gives Obi-Wan his back.

"Anakin, you really must be getting up," Obi-Wan says. He opens the blinds and throws sunlight over Anakin but the boy pays it no mind, drawing his blankets over his head.

"Anakin." Obi-Wan growls softly, and he does see Anakin tense a moment at the sound.

It occurs to Obi-Wan he could, as an alpha, _command_ his padawan to get up and start his day, but he lets that idea go as soon as it comes—he feels Anakin is already angry at him again for what could be a thousand things.

"I will Force Lift you to the medical wing if you keep up these bizarre sleeping patterns," he tells Anakin, before heading into the refresher to get ready for the day.

* * *

Obi-Wan's making his way back from the lecture that Anakin should've attended when he spots the boy in question.

He tracks Anakin's golden head through the crowd of padawans rushing to the refectories and hurries after him.

He follows Anakin through several halls, speeding into a jog. Anakin really is in a hurry. The only thing he should've done upon dragging himself from bed was message him so they could catch up on some lost hours of training.

Obi-Wan's soon out of breath trying to close the distance between himself and Anakin's long legs, but he's figured out they're close to the accommodation sector.

The Supreme Chancellor had come this afternoon. Obi-Wan had been there as a member of the welcome party, but he hadn't welcomed him. For once, Mace Windu had to tell _Obi-Wan_ to smooth the glare from his face as he watched the head of the Republic scan the gathering of Jedi for a padawan who, at the time, had been safely asleep in their quarters.

Only now, in the low of the day, was Anakin going to see Palpatine.

Obi-Wan stays behind the corner as Anakin trots into the visitors' section. He watches Anakin finally slow his gait at the sixth sealed door, the Chancellor's oft-selected chambers and the only to offer any sort of view.

Anakin starts rapidly tapping a very long code into the lockpad, rocking back and forth on his heels.

Obi-Wan doesn't miss the fresh plait in his hair or the cloak he's never seen Anakin wear. Its dark synthsilk train spills on the floor.

The door opens and Anakin disappears inside.

It seals behind him.

Obi-Wan pulls up his hood and ventures into the hall.

Really, it bothers him to spy on Anakin like this, but he doesn't trust such a potent politico, and Anakin's in no state to resist his influence.

Reaching the door, Obi-Wan extends his senses with the aid of the Force.

Yet, as he stretches his hearing into the metal shutter, he finds he can continue no further. His mind recoils at some dark barrier.

He flinches and backs away from the door.

Was that Anakin's doing? No, no. It hadn't felt nearly like his shield. This was much older.

Blacker.

He has to physically shake its taint from himself.

"Are you all right, Master?" a passing padawan asks him, trying to meet his eyes under the shadow of his hood.

Obi-Wan smiles at her. "Quite all right," he lies.

He strokes his beard once she's gone. Many more troubles burden his mind, and the encounter with that Dark force has worn him beyond the point of trying again.

He decides to wait for his padawan.

Close to the wall, he can hear faint fragments of conversation. Rises in tone on questions. Anakin's name on undeserving lips. The faint cadence of his own.

He can hear Anakin laugh and laugh and laugh.

Obi-Wan wishes to hear it clearer even as he wishes to never hear it again.

 _Attachment leads to jealousy_. He knows _that_ , he _knows_ that.

But that does not stop his nails edging into his palms or his teeth crushing together. It certainly doesn't stop a fiery hand from taking his heart into its fist.

He listens and waits as long as he is able. The shadows peak over him and the sector darkens into the evening hour.

At last he wonders what matters an old man could possibly spend so much time discussing with his young padawan and this brings him to the door.

Obi-Wan takes down his hood and presses the annunciator.

After an entirely too long moment Anakin and the Supreme Chancellor himself appear before him. Anakin's almost behind the older man. When he sees it's Obi-Wan his jaw sets and his nostrils flare.

"Master Obi-Wan!" Palpatine greets. "I saw you at my arrival but couldn't find a moment to speak with you, I'm afraid. Would you come in and discuss your recent assignment to Ryloth? An out and about Jedi would know more about the state of the Outer Rim than my advisors ever could."

"You will have to ask the Council of such when you speak with them," Obi-Wan says plainly. "And I actually haven't come on a courtesy call—the hour is getting late and my young padawan's missed his training session."

Palpatine smiles and rests his hands on Anakin's shoulders. "Ah! You'll have to forgive Anakin—I'm the one guilty of prattling on and keeping him from his duties. When you are my age time has a habit of slipping by, especially in the good company of such a bright young man."

Palpatine squeezes Anakin's shoulders before nudging him towards Obi-Wan, "Alas, I can't keep him forever."

Obi-Wan's entire being seems to ease at having Anakin by his side, out of that room, no matter how intensely Anakin is glaring at him—Obi-Wan senses Darkness around the Chancellor, though he knows neither its origin nor purpose.

"The Order and the Republic must stand strong against this Separatist threat," Palpatine says. "But I truly hope it doesn't come to _war_ , Master Jedi. I want to thank you both personally for your exemplary efforts towards a _peaceful_ galaxy. That is all any of us hopes for."

Obi-Wan bows his head slightly.

"Thank _you_ , sir," Anakin gushes. "It's because of you the Jedi are looked upon so favorably."

Palpatine touches his heart. "Anakin," he says sweetly.

"Good night, Chancellor," Obi-Wan cuts in.

"Good night, Master Jedi."

* * *

Obi-Wan does not say anything to Anakin as they walk to the training grounds.

He nearly trips on Anakin's lengthy adornments several times as the boy insists on striding ahead of him. If the cloak hadn't cost so much Obi-Wan dares admit he'd take his lightsaber and cut off all that excessive material.

The courtyard is a long way from the accommodation sector, and Obi-Wan mulls and steeps in his anger. He cannot help but feel it.

The Darkness he touched has awakened a restless being within himself. He fears what it means.

"Here, Anakin," he says when Anakin continues past the entrance to the grounds.

Anakin stops and looks at him over his shoulder. "It's late. I'm too tired to do this."

"You have been in bed all day and done nothing but blither and blather with the Chancellor. You haven't held your lightsaber in weeks. You are behind on your training and studies and commitment to the Order."

Anakin turns to Obi-Wan. His hands are fisted in his showy cloak, drawing the fabric tight over his shoulders. "How can I be behind when I'm better than you?"

Obi-Wan shakes his head. "Those are Palpatine's nonsense words, I hear them for what they are. Don't you realize he tells you only what you want to hear? Aren't you above his influence?"

"You're just jealous!" Anakin stamps into the courtyard.

"Jealous of Palpatine?" Obi-Wan asks incredulously.

Anakin throws his cloak off. "Jealous of me." He snatches a training saber from the rack. He pauses there, staring at the weapon, considering. "Yes, the Chancellor too." Anakin looks at Obi-Wan. "Because he has the power to change things while you just do the Council's bidding."

Obi-Wan doesn't know if Anakin realizes those words lost their sting long ago. This is a well-trodden argument. A familiar rhythm of words.

Just what they need.

"We are both sworn to the Republic. But if you attended your history lectures you'd know the true nature of politicians."

"How can you speak this way of him? Chancellor Palpatine champions for the Jedi!"

"Only because it will serve him, somehow."

"In the same way it serves the Order to have the endorsement of the Supreme Chancellor, Obi-Wan?"

"It does... but Jedi don't seek power."

Obi-Wan taps his blade with his own.

Anakin counters him with more force than he anticipated and his training saber scalds a burning stripe across Obi-Wan's fingers.

Obi-Wan shakes the pain from his hand and steps back to put distance between them, but Anakin rushes him yet again, a snarl on his lips.

He matches Anakin's furious blows with a grin. "I thought you were tired!"

The electronic hum of low-powered plasma blades sings over the grounds as his padawan drives him down the steps towards the Great Tree. Illumination banks light Anakin's sweaty brow. His form is well-practiced, yet lacks Obi-Wan's own control in his reckless anger.

When Obi-Wan's heel meets the Force-sensitive wood and Anakin thinks he has him and rears up his saber, Obi-Wan ducks under his elbow and hits him across his shoulder blades.

Anakin spins and brings his weapon in an arc. Obi-Wan has to duck again and hears his padawan's blade cut the air above his head. Then he must go on the defensive once more.

The impact of their weapons twinges in Obi-Wan's wrists and up his arms. Anakin swings now with such force a well-placed strike could fracture a small bone, let alone burn him.

"Why can't you just let me have a friend?" Anakin strains.

"A friend? Look to your fellow padawans for friendship. You are only eighteen years of age, Anakin. His interest in you is strange." The glow of their sabers cross in the air. "You must sense that!"

"You don't know him as I do," Anakin says quietly, nearly lost in their spar. "He will help me when no one will."

This gives Obi-Wan pause. This isn't Anakin's usual script.

"Help you?" Obi-Wan questions, peering at Anakin closely as they circle each other. "What help do you need?"

"Nothing you could give," Anakin says lowly, and sweeps in like a kreehawk.

Obi-Wan counters him with a harsh grunt. Sweat dribbles down his back. Anakin's saber glances off the handle of his own and he drops it.

He calls it back to hand with the Force and spins it over his knuckles. He points it out towards Anakin, looking down the attenuated green blade. "Get rid of that damnable obstruction you've put between us and I _can_ help you, Anakin!"

"No!" Anakin roars. "I won't do that, Master! You cannot _ever_ know!"

"Know what?" Obi-Wan pleads. "I know many secrets eat at your heart. They will turn it black!"

"I don't care!"

Anakin lunges at him, his blade poised over his head.

Obi-Wan's vision slows to a trickle.

Spittle flies from Anakin's grimaced lips. Madness hungers in his eyes. In his hands is Obi-Wan's own lightsaber.

 _Stop this!_

Pain shoots through his head and pours a shower of stars into his eyes.

The world flickers, it flickers, it flickers and—

" _Stop!"_

He thrusts his hand out.

Anakin flies backwards and crashes into the Great Tree's thick trunk. The uneti bark lights up in a furious, glowing blink.

Obi-Wan's breathing hard. He concentrates on the inflation of his lungs for several moments as the world comes back to pace.

He blinks stinging sweat from his eyelashes. Through them he sees his padawan groaning at the root of the tree.

A burst of worry sharpens his sight.

"Anakin!"

He rushes to him.

"Oh no, I'm very sorry," Obi-Wan says to Anakin's pained face. He tries to help him to his feet. "I'm so sorry, Anakin. I don't know what... I lost control of myself. Are you all right?"

His padawan pushes him away. "Leave me alone."

Anakin stands with much effort and nearly tips back over. Shed leaves tumble from his shoulders. He hunches forward, his braid swinging in front of his face. His arm is locked around his stomach. Sweat drips off the small slope of his nose.

An icy pit opens in Obi-Wan's belly.

With a shaky breath he reaches for Anakin. "Come, young one, lean on me and I'll help you to the medical wing."

His touch seems to crumple Anakin. Anakin's eyes turn up in his skull. His legs fold.

Obi-Wan catches him under the arms and they sink to the ground together beneath the boughs of the Great Tree.

"Anakin?"

He frantically turns Anakin's face towards him. Under the slide of his palm he finds Anakin's eyelids twitching and jumping, and he's helpless as this unnatural shaking spreads to every muscle in Anakin's body.

"What's _happened?"_ Obi-Wan asks Anakin, he asks himself, he shouts it to the Force.

Anakin convulses in his arms. From his lips comes a horrific pour of white froth.

Obi-Wan gasps at the terrible sight and in his shock nearly throws Anakin away from him.

In the next moment he secures his arms around his padawan and swiftly scoops his seizing body from the ground. Anakin has grown taller than him, and its only the leanness of youth and Obi-Wan's stark, encompassing panic that renders him light.

Anakin shudders and spits, jolting with some cruel current.

Obi-Wan runs from the courtyard.

The medical wing! He must make it there. He feels Anakin's life fading, and his entire world with it.

"Oh, _please hold on_ , young one," he begs Anakin.

Obi-Wan runs through the maze of halls. He gasps for more breath than his lungs can give him.

As he finally crosses onto the snowy white flooring of the Halls of Healing, several 2-1Bs and a Fixit race out to meet him, followed by a Togruta girl in the long dress and headband of a Circle Healer.

"Help me! He is dying!" Obi-Wan pleads. "He is dying!"

The young Togruta Healer chatters rapidly to the droids in binary and points. They zip back inside, and then she hurries up to Obi-Wan.

"What's happened?" Her voice is professional and calm and it forces Obi-Wan to be the same.

"I don't know," he says, "I threw him with the Force and he hit the Great Tree hard. I must've hurt him internally."

A blue flash lights Anakin's shaking body as the Healer scans him. "Seizure," she examines, and then says something in droidspeak to the 2-1B assistant beside her. A metallic cord snakes from its chest and an aperture at the end releases a thick red vapor over Anakin's trembling face.

Anakin arches, his spine bending into a circle, and Obi-Wan nearly drops him.

More of that awful foam burbles from between his lips.

And then, all at once, he falls still.

The other droids zoom out with a repulsor gurney. The Togruta Healer takes Anakin's legs and together her and Obi-Wan lay Anakin down onto the lift, and they take him into the medical center.

Obi-Wan runs after the Togruta.

"What did you do?" he asks her.

"Neuro-spray," she chirps. "Please, if you would wait outside the wing, Master Obi-Wan..."

Another collection of Healers come and teem around his padawan. Anakin's covered in a rainbow of different medisensors.

"Will he die?" Obi-Wan persists.

"Now, he lives," she says. "Uncertain he will continue to live."

"It's my fault. He must've smacked his head into the tree. Oh, _Force_."

A couple low-pitched beeps come from the droid beside her. The Healer looks sharply at it and nods. She raises a hand filled with the glow of healing Force energy and cocoons Anakin within it.

"No internal injuries, Master Obi-Wan. He has been poisoned."

Obi-Wan stops in his tracks.

" _Poisoned?"_

The Healer continues on ahead of him.

* * *

They take Anakin into a heavily oxygenated emergency unit, and there Obi-Wan's told to stay behind the transparisteel.

He watches the readouts, having pushed his senses through the window to listen to Anakin's oddly-paced heart.

He studies the mechanical faces of the medical droids for clues and listens to their beeps.

He wishes he could understand binary.

Anakin had offered to teach him.

Obi-Wan curls his fingers on the window.

Poisoned.

It couldn't be anything but the suppressants. Stars, why did he let Anakin agree to them? How could _he_ have given Anakin that damn injection? He'd known they were dangerous!

 _They'd_ known, a bitter part of him says. Obi-Wan listens to its whisper, and clenches his teeth. Yes, the three options they'd offered his padawan—sterilization, exile, or _poison!_

Such anger rises in him his head feels light.

He steps away from the window and falls into a chair. He tries to slow his quickened breath by focusing on Anakin's still beating heart.

This vehemence isn't healthy for him or his mind—and it certainly is getting the better of him more often than he would like.

"Master Obi-Wan?"

Obi-Wan looks up and sees the Togruta girl before him. And she really is just a girl, now that he truly looks at her, likely little older than Anakin himself.

"Where is Master Che?" he asks her without thinking, and inclines his head. "I'm sorry, I don't want to seem ungrateful. Thank you."

"I am Sorona Wel," Sorona says smoothly, and if she is offended, her white-striped face shows nothing of it, "Master Che's padawan."

"Padawan?" Obi-Wan remarks. "I wasn't aware Vokara had taken an apprentice."

"She felt it was her duty as head of the Circle to train a successor." Sorona's face finally creases into a small furrow in her forehead. "She is getting older."

Before Obi-Wan can reply, Sorona looks at her datapad. "Skywalker is stable," she says. "The toxin was identified as the Telsix estrus suppressants. If we had screened him only a few days later, we would never have cleared him for their use—if it is possible to ever truly sanction the administration of such a volatile drug."

Obi-Wan looks at her. "I don't understand. What difference would a few days have made?"

"Then his raised midi-chlorian levels would have shown on our sensors."

"I'm sorry, I still don't understand. How could they be raised?"

"I apologize for any confusion," Sorona says. "To be clear, Skywalker's body rejected the suppressants because he is pregnant."

"That's not possible."

Something like sympathy suffuses Sorona's face. Obi-Wan's vision throbs. "His cycles have started, he is able—"

"No."

Obi-Wan stands. He puts his hand over his heart to contain its cataclysmic beat.

"This cannot be true. It cannot be, it simply cannot be possible."

Obi-Wan sags against the transparisteel. A chorus of voices roar around him.

 _I need you to do it, Master_.

 _I am sure you'll tell me the truth eventually_.

 _I will Force Lift you to the medical wing if you keep up these bizarre sleeping patterns_.

 _He will help me when no one will_.

 _Meet anyone interesting wandering around?_

 _It won't hurt much_.

 _You cannot ever know!_

 _Master, I'm burning_.

Obi-Wan squeezes his eyes shut. He covers his face. His fingers are sticky, he can feel it, they're sticky and covered in—

"Stress response. Master Obi-Wan, lower your respiration. Your heart rate is very high."

Obi-Wan opens his eyes to Sorona in front of him. He blinks rapidly in the bright light of her scanner.

"Breathe deeply," she says. "In through your nose and out through your mouth."

Obi-Wan grips her tunics. "Who do you report to?"

Sorona firmly restrains his wrist and pulls his hand from her. "I think that answer is obvious, Master Obi-Wan."

"The Council, do you release medical records to them?"

"Yes," Sorona says, veiled suspicion in her blue eyes, "when the Council makes a request for them."

"Only on request?"

"On request, or if we deem there is anything significant they should be made aware of."

Obi-Wan's mind works. "You know I am in good standing with the Council. I would never deceive them. But this is major news... if I could just tell them at a better time..."

A laugh escapes Sorona, a low mutter of a sound. "Good try," she says. "But you do not fool me. You only reveal yourself." She considers him. "It is certainly not a secret you can keep for long."

"I have no plans to keep it a secret," he says. "I know that would be foolish. But we both know the fragile state Anakin is in. You can see how much stress this would heap upon him. I speak only out of care for my padawan. Doesn't a Healer's interest lie in the wellbeing of her patients?"

Sorona leans back from him, a sharp sigh escaping her nose. "More fragile than you know," she says. "By all rights, Skywalker should have miscarried. We cannot account for why the youngling hasn't perished."

Obi-Wan stays quiet, watching her carefully.

"You place us in a difficult position, Master Obi-Wan." She purses her lips. "I would trust you to tell the Council yourself. My master has always spoken highly of you. That's not idle praise, from her."

"Thank you," Obi-Wan says.

"But if the Council requests such information," Sorona continues, staring at him hard, "we will have no choice but to acquiesce to that demand."

"I understand," Obi-Wan says.

He looks at Anakin through the window and studies his slack features and then, despite himself, the still flat plane of his stomach.

"When will my padawan be able to leave?"

"Skywalker's blood is undergoing hemoperfusion to remove the drug. The average time for this procedure is twenty-four hours—if there are no further complications after that, then Skywalker will be released when he regains consciousness."

"The..." Obi-Wan trails off. There's a sense if he articulates what he wants to say, it will become real. But he must know. "The... baby... you said it lives? It's unharmed?"

"The embryo is fully intact," Sorona says. That small furrow appears between her brow stripes once more. "In such an early stage of development, such a thing is unimaginably fragile. It seems a miracle..."

Sorona continues, but Obi-Wan can't listen. He's gone far away inside his mind at one single word.

Embryo.

Baby.

Child.

And it is his.


	3. Chapter 3

Obi-Wan goes to the meditation chambers. He sits in front of the pond, he faces the warm wind, and he closes his eyes.

His mind stills and detaches from recent events.

It marches straight to the black seal.

Once more he claws at the cover. He rips and thrashes and seeks to be folded within it. He must go into that darkness.

The only way to be rid of it is to know it.

He calls upon the energy that ties all things together and his body sings below him. He seeks out the Force's memory—sight when he had none, feelings when he felt none.

It is there, kept within himself.

A muddied image comes to Obi-Wan's mind. It fades in and out as he tries to grasp it.

His head aches. His body falls forward. He cradles the image delicately and wills it to become clear, but it will not take form.

He needs to go back there.

Obi-Wan focuses deeply on the event he'd begged the Force to let him forget. He dredges it up from the depths of his being and remembers each black heartbeat of that moment.

He smells Anakin's heat once more.

He lets himself hear that horrific _NO_ roar between his ears.

He lets Anakin's frightening grip on his mind freeze him.

He feels Anakin climbing onto him. He feels the texture of his padawan's skin, the warmth it leaks into him.

Obi-Wan rolls off the bed. He feels how each pearl of his spine hit that floor so hard and he lets himself experience that pain.

He screams, "Stop it, Anakin!" as he had _screamed_ before, as he has not remembered screaming since Theed—

Obi-Wan sees Anakin rear over him. All his naked skin and fury. He remembers how hot Anakin had felt in his lap.

How frightening he looked.

He thinks of each of Anakin's slim fingers around his own lightsaber, their inflamed tips. He goes to the Force to take his weapon from Anakin.

He watches Anakin's muscles tense, his soft underarms as he raises Obi-Wan's lightsaber, the slip of air as Anakin thrusts it down towards him.

Cold metal cracks on his temple.

Pain!

He is losing consciousness. His world flickers... it flickers...

His eyes close.

But the world remains.

And that muddied image sharpens and moves.

Obi-Wan lets the Force show him.

From a point above both of them, he's witness to Anakin's carnality. He watches his padawan shred apart his leggings and pull his member of its confines, still and soft.

Anakin looks at it and lets out a despairing howl. He bangs his soaking head against Obi-Wan's chest. Anakin's hand squeezes him punishingly tight for not offering him what he needs. Obi-Wan feels it, even as he watches himself lie there inert.

Anakin darts down his body until his dark gold head covers Obi-Wan's indecency. Anakin's fingers grip his sides.

Obi-Wan sees his head move... he feels Anakin take him into his mouth... no one has ever done that... it feels hot and soft and so unbearably pleasurable.

Obi-Wan doesn't want to remember _this_. He _shouldn't_ remember this. How does his unconscious body know this sensation so distinctly? He can feel all the different textures surround him—Anakin's lips, his tongue, the slippery flesh of his cheeks, brush of hard teeth. Obi-Wan's body even remembers Anakin's rush of breath hitting the hair surrounding his length.

 _How can this be so?_ he asks the Force. _Please, I don't want to remember this. I don't want to know!_

But he had. He needs to.

Far away from this vision he is staring into the pond water, swirling it with the Force into maddening spirals.

But he is also here, a lens on the ceiling of this room, watching the rape of Anakin and himself.

Blessedly, cursedly, Anakin lets Obi-Wan go from his mouth. Anakin moves his head to the side and Obi-Wan can see his tongue now as it drags up his stiffened length.

He cannot close his eyes. He doesn't have them.

Anakin shifts, his limbs quick with his unbearable urge and yet clumsy with his true lack of experience. He finally balances over Obi-Wan's stomach and reaches back for—

 _Idiot!_ Obi-Wan shouts down to his own incognizant face. _Wake up! Stop this! Do you have any idea what this will cause?_

But he had not. And he does not.

Anakin takes him into his body all at once in a sharp, gutting stab.

Obi-Wan wants to weep, but he is encased in squeezing, constricting walls of hot flesh.

The nightmare shimmers in and out of focus as he fights to not let this sensation overcome him. His body's toes bunch.

 _Forget it!_ Obi-Wan begs himself. _Forget it!_

Below him, he sees his own pinkened face has tensed. His eyebrows have drawn together and his mouth has opened.

Anakin throws his head back towards the ceiling. Obi-Wan stares down at his tipped up face. Down there on the flophouse floor, both Anakin and himself wear the same expression.

Obi-Wan hears the phantom echo of a loud cry of relief.

Even as Obi-Wan witnesses this burning creature begin to slake his lusts violently as if an animal, and he feels every bit of pleasure he never wanted to feel, and he knows what grief it leads to—in the midst of all this, a sense of comfort washes over him.

In that awful moment, he was _there_ with Anakin.

The release comes quickly. The pleasure is so great tears pool in his body's eyes, somewhere twisting on the grass of the meditation chambers as he is twisting below himself, his mouth open in unconscious ecstasy.

Obi-Wan can feel himself swell and tie Anakin and him together and the Force brightens and their child is created in one perfect instant, brought to being by a searing brushstroke.

Awe suffuses him. It does not fade, not even as he watches Anakin still, look around the room, and then bring trembling fingers to Obi-Wan's face.

Not even as Anakin slumps forward into Obi-Wan's chest and his bare back heaves with sobs.

 _It will be okay_ , Obi-Wan tells Anakin.

He wishes nothing more than to reach out to this prodigy and hold him, _forgive_ him, but Anakin cries to an unconscious man who will wake later and cry just the same.

The room fills with white light. Obi-Wan begins to drift away with it.

The Force carries him back to his body and sets him inside gently.

Obi-Wan takes a deep breath.

He can't breathe.

Jolting his eyes open and flailing his arms, Obi-Wan feels cold all around him and sees nothing but a murky film over his eyes. Water pours into his lungs.

He's fallen into the pond.

Obi-Wan kicks his legs and pushes forward until his fingers catch in sand. He sinks his nails into the verge and drags himself out of the pond.

He falls on the sand, soaking and shivering, coughing up water and sucking in long desperate breaths of air.

Something beats furiously under his chest and Obi-Wan draws himself up to find an orange poi fish has run aground in his struggle.

He carefully picks up its plump, thrashing body and lays it back in the water.

The fish springs from his fingers in a flashing arc and slips back into the pond with hardly a ripple.

* * *

Anakin is released the next day.

He doesn't say much to Obi-Wan besides that he's starving—Anakin asks him to take him somewhere where food isn't made by droids.

Shuura Spin is his favorite. The eatery is a short ways from the Temple, and a common spot for tourists. When he was younger, Anakin loved talking with all the off-worlders from the restaurant's revolving tables and hearing all the stories they would tell him.

His curiosity for the wonders of the stars had filled Obi-Wan with an acute sadness as it dimmed over the years, replaced with a soul who had seen too much of them and not found them very wonderful at all and many of them dead.

Shuura Spin is crowded.

Anakin waits beside Obi-Wan for a table to open up, standing in a citron glow and sucking from the hose of a chocolate-flavored bubbler.

Obi-Wan sees him move his fingers at the machine and laugh as he pulls out sugary bubbles the size of his own head.

"Should I take this frivolous use of the Force as a sign you're feeling better?"

Anakin takes the hose from his mouth. "I felt fine when I awoke, Master."

"I'm dearly sorry for what happened, Anakin," Obi-Wan says, reaching out to touch Anakin's shoulder. "I'm ashamed of myself for wielding the Force against you like I did. I did not mean to."

Anakin shrugs. "I hardly remember it. The Healers told me that... everything is fine."

He smiles.

Obi-Wan looks between his large eyes. There's many things he could say. His mind stretches for Anakin's until it can no more. Until the wall.

Being deprived of this intimacy feels unbearable.

"I wonder if they've shared with us the same discoveries," Obi-Wan says carefully.

Anakin's slight smile drops off his lips. His eyes dart between Obi-Wan's. They seek and find the truth there.

Anakin takes a deep breath. Such fear, and anger, pour from his eyes. "Obi-Wan," he says lowly, pointing his finger at him, "it's none of your business."

Obi-Wan looks at him. "Is it not?"

Anakin scoffs. "I'm leaving," he says, and brushes past him.

Obi-Wan grabs his wrist. "You are not."

Anakin snatches his arm away and cradles it to his chest like Obi-Wan's burned him. He looks back at him with glimmering eyes.

Obi-Wan stops an empty table. "Sit down," he says firmly.

"I'm not hungry anymore."

"Anakin."

Petulantly pulling his plump lower lip between his teeth, Anakin takes a seat.

Obi-Wan sits across from him, and the table resumes rotating around the restaurant.

Anakin sits slumped with his hands fisted in his robes. He ignores the holomenu that's popped up in front of him. Between its blue particles, he stares at Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan orders for the both of them. He gets Anakin all his favorite items.

"They've got sweesonberry rolls," he remarks. "Do you want the red or blue ones?"

Anakin says nothing.

"Red, then."

A handful of dataries later, a Mirialan waitress brings them their meals.

Obi-Wan takes a deep breath before he starts eating—these floating, spinning tables always give him the same vague nausea that flying does, and the lemony lighting doesn't help.

After several moments of just looking at his own dishes, Anakin finally picks up his utensils. But once he starts eating, he does it with an appetite—he fits whole cuts of trimpian into his mouth even as he tries to stuff the berry-topped rolls into his cheeks.

Obi-Wan covers his laugh with a sip from some Alderaani wine.

Anakin's gluttony subdues halfway through his food while Obi-Wan's only on his third spoonful of potato rice.

"Master," he says. His tongue swipes miasra sauce off his chin like a sandpanther. "Are you going to tell the Council?"

Obi-Wan wipes his beard with a napkin. "This isn't exactly something I can keep hidden from them."

Anakin moves his fingertips under his ribs. "We could keep it a secret."

"It will be obvious in a matter of months, Anakin."

"Well, maybe it won't be," Anakin fires back. He takes his glass of muja juice and leans from his meal. His other hand fidgets and tugs at his padawan braid. "When the Council finds out, they'll make me get rid of it."

"No. They can't. That isn't the Jedi way."

"I know what they'll do." Anakin closes his eyes. "I see it, every night in my dreams, Master."

"Dreams, just dreams," Obi-Wan tells him, as he has always told him.

"No, Master, these are different."

"How long have you had these dreams?" Obi-Wan asks, a sick feeling roiling in his stomach. "Tell me how long you have known."

"You know I am strong in the Force, Master." Anakin breathes in deeply. "The moment it happened, I felt it, how it glowed brighter and burned. Even before that night, I dreamed of that flophouse, I dreamed of you taking me there."

Anakin smiles sadly. "The Healers told me nothing I wasn't already aware of, Obi-Wan."

Obi-Wan doesn't know what to say. He can only lick his lips, bitter with wine and bitten back words. Anakin had _known_. He had known as he stepped up onto the parapet, he had known as he stood lying to the Council, he had known as he _recklessly_ asked Obi-Wan to inject him with those damned suppressants, and he had known as he crossed sabers with him under the wide boughs of the uneti tree.

And Anakin had gone to _Palpatine_ before thinking to tell him.

"You should not have kept the truth from me, young one," Obi-Wan finally says. "You have spared me no grief by doing so."

Anakin's lips twist. His fingers whiten around his glass. "I thought those suppressants would take care of this."

" _Anakin_ ," Obi-Wan says sharply, and Anakin meets his eyes evenly, their blue depths as achingly accessible as the clear water below a steep precipice. In them Obi-Wan finds an unsettling sense of understanding.

He remembers Anakin's tears, the way he said _it's cold, Master_. His trembling hands.

It isn't incomprehensible of Anakin to have wished for such an outcome. His padawan is only a few weeks past his eighteenth lifeday and children are forbidden to Jedi. Obi-Wan knows this and yet, feels a stab in his heart, both at his own failure to stop this from happening and that Anakin would let him unknowingly put a child in peril with no care of how he felt about it.

Their child. A part of them.

But would it be better if it had worked as Anakin wished? Wouldn't it be better to not have a living reminder of what occurred that night?

If it could only not be so.

Their short journey back to the Temple is long.

For once, Obi-Wan has to slow his own pace to walk alongside his yawning apprentice. Anakin's long lashes take several moments to even blink.

"Perhaps we should find a speeder?"

Anakin straightens a bit. "No, Master, I'm fine. I'm enjoying the exercise. I hated being stuck in the medical wing."

Obi-Wan hums dubiously, but doesn't push the issue. He hopes this sort of exhaustion is normal for such a fledgling stage of pregnancy. The youngling would only be the size of a juna berry, or the nail of his smallest finger.

He finds himself looking over at Anakin more than watching where he's walking. He traces the soft profile of Anakin's face and studies the flat plane of his belly. He wonders how soon it will be until he looks there and sees the curve of their child.

He directs his attention ahead and folds his hands within his sleeves. "I have something to ask you."

"Then ask, Master," Anakin says tiredly.

Obi-Wan stops him with a hand on his shoulder.

Now they are in view of the Temple and the russet sunset. Anakin's face is cast in falling light and the flittering shadows of swarming skylanes.

For a strange, wild moment, Anakin looks like Padmé.

"Were you with anyone else?" Obi-Wan asks.

Anakin's lips part. His eyes fling wide. "Why would you ask me that, Master?"

"Answer the question, Anakin."

"No, Master. It was only you." Anakin drops his eyes. He lowers his chin and looks at Obi-Wan through his eyelashes. "No one else, Master."

Obi-Wan lets his hand slide off Anakin's shoulder and nods mutely. He wants to tell Anakin to stop staring at him that way, disquieted by the tone of his response.

Something like uncertainty diffuses Anakin's intense gaze and Obi-Wan hears his throat click. Anakin draws his eyes away from him and settles them on the Temple ziggurat, "Do you believe in the Will of the Force?" Anakin asks.

"It's likely there is some element of truth to the idea," Obi-Wan says. "But it is unknown to me why the Force would ordain our current circumstance."

"I doubt it myself at times," Anakin admits. "But I think the Force speaks through my dreams. I don't want the ones I have lately to become real."

"We are in this together, Anakin," Obi-Wan says pleasantly. That is all he knows now.

Anakin furrows his brows.

A storm erupts in the Force.

Anakin draws a short sharp breath and turns from Obi-Wan. He starts to breathe hard through his nose.

"Are you all right?" Obi-Wan asks, trying to tell if Anakin's reaction is wholly emotional.

"Can we just go?" Anakin snaps.

His padawan strides on ahead of him.

* * *

Anakin's bad mood doesn't improve once they've returned to their room—as they lie in their beds, furious energy pops in the Force even as Obi-Wan's sure Anakin's fallen asleep.

He's put on a brave face for his padawan, but now dread's a cold pit in his belly as he thinks of the Council.

The life in Anakin is just beginning and it's put an end to both of theirs.

If it wasn't for the trappings of their lives, Obi-Wan could almost settle with the idea of a youngling. It is still an innocent child of the Force, whatever the makings of its conception.

But the Council would never see it as such. Expulsion. Exile. And if they knew the whole grim story, the blame would rest on Anakin. And then maybe, imprisonment.

But Anakin _isn't_ to blame.

Why did he take Anakin from the Temple? What possessed him that night? If he had simply done something else, anything else, they would not be in this situation. Even if it had involved locking Anakin away in the holding chambers for the duration of his cycle, why did he not at least consider that option? Was his mind so easily clouded by his padawan's irrepressible fire?

He should have spoken to the Council. He should have _kept away_ from Anakin.


	4. Chapter 4

Their vocation continues undisturbed for several more weeks. The Council's satisfied the suppressants work and no one but himself, Anakin and several Healers know of the truth.

A truth that becomes obvious to Obi-Wan every day—Anakin gains weight, and when he's not wearing his outer robes, Obi-Wan can see his belly is no longer flat.

When he notices that unmistakable curve for the first time, he nearly weeps. Happiness, grief, _fear_ , he feels all these things.

And an awful sense of blame, as the life within Anakin takes shape and becomes real.

"I can hear it," he says to Anakin.

"Hear what, Master?" Anakin's face is a mask of serenity in the Room of a Thousand Fountains.

"The child."

Anakin's meditative form doesn't weaken, but Obi-Wan sees his eyes move beneath their lids.

"It's humming like a plasma blade." Obi-Wan almost smiles. "Louder and louder every day."

"When did it start?" Anakin asks.

"Some time ago. But I must be close to you to sense it. It's the midi-chlorians singing. Do you hear it?"

"Yes, Master. But it isn't a hum." Anakin inhales deeply. "It's a starfighter engine."

Obi-Wan smiles, but then his heart begins to beat loudly in his ears. A wash of panic floods his being.

A child.

He's going to be a father. A parent. Responsible.

Guilty.

"Master?" Anakin asks softly, opening his eyes to look at him with concern.

Obi-Wan tries to quiet his dizzying thoughts and keep his pretense of relaxation, but his next words spill from him, "I worry what will become of us, Anakin. Perhaps it'd be best to tell the Council now."

Anakin's jaw works. "How can you say this?"

"I have kept the truth from them too long already."

"We don't need to tell them the _truth_ ," Anakin spits, clawing his fingers into his meditation mat. "We agreed to keep it a secret, remember?"

Obi-Wan frowns. "I agreed to no such thing, Anakin. I told you we couldn't hide this no matter how much we wished to. And that is becoming truer by the day."

Anakin's shaking his head, his lips a trembling snarl. "You've already made up your mind."

Obi-Wan looks away. "I have just been waiting until you felt better."

Anakin's breath is short and furious. Obi-Wan hears his teeth scrape together and then Anakin spits something in Huttese at him. Obi-Wan doesn't understand it, but it's short and sharp and it hurts.

Anakin leaves him in a slash of his dark robes.

Obi-Wan comes to one of the many fountains and eases his hand into the cool water as if it's his burning heart.

He knows what's best for them, he has to. He can't let such deceit fester in him just to hold off the inevitable for a few more weeks.

And it is his fault this has happened.

* * *

Obi-Wan seeks out Master Yoda. His admission isn't one he can bare before twelve judging eyes, and whatever the wise Grand Master determines to be his fate, he'll accept as just.

"Fear, I sense in you," Yoda says. He looks almost sad. "Rare, is this."

"Yes, Master Yoda, I am afraid," Obi-Wan admits.

"What is it you fear?" Yoda looks at him with his large, discerning gaze. It's impossible to hold with the weight of the words still pressing on Obi-Wan's heart, and he looks out at the busy Coruscanti skies.

"I fear for my padawan, Master Yoda," Obi-Wan says finally. "Anakin is with child."

Yoda touches his paw to his chest. He leans heavily on his walking stick. His ears fold down. " _No_. How can this be?"

"I am the father."

Yoda's ears spring up. He inclines towards Obi-Wan. " _What?"_

"I was with Anakin during his cycle."

Yoda turns away from him. He sits down as if his old legs can bear no weight at all. He blinks slowly.

Obi-Wan can do nothing but share his shocked silence. Even as his heart hammers, he is much lighter inside, free of the burden of such a secret. Guilt, a small black segment of it, uncoils from his being.

"How can this be?" Yoda asks again quietly.

"Anakin's medical records hold the truth as well," Obi-Wan says.

Yoda looks at him. "Believe you, I do, Obi-Wan. Allowed this to happen, how have you, I do not know."

Obi-Wan's next confession lingers in his lungs. This, he must be careful with. Master Yoda cannot think Anakin could be blamed in any way. Obi-Wan remembers the green alien's odd stare in the last Council meeting, how his narrowed eyes had seemed to study each crease of expression on Anakin's face.

If he knew this last bit of truth, Yoda would think his padawan a monster and cast him from the Temple. But Master Yoda hadn't been _there_ to see Anakin in the throes of delirium, his being dissolved all but entirely by hungering flames, only a burning animal wearing Anakin's flesh.

"It was a moment of weakness on my part, Master Yoda." Obi-Wan bows his head. "I could not curb my desires and acted upon them selfishly."

Yoda makes a sharp gesture with his stick, "Hidden this from us, you have. _Lied_ , you have."

"Yes, Master."

"Better from a Jedi Knight, I would expect. Better from _Obi-Wan_."

"I know, Master Yoda," he says softly. His eyes sting. "I've made a mockery of the Order with such sordid actions. I've broken all the vows I swore to uphold. I will comply with any discipline you see fit, but please, don't look upon my padawan or the child unkindly. Don't punish them. My own actions have caused this."

"Yes," Yoda agrees. "Inappropriate, your relationship with your padawan has become." He looks at Obi-Wan intensely. "Perhaps, always impure, it has been."

Yoda's look is hard, as accusing as much as it questions.

Obi-Wan shifts on his feet at Yoda's implications. They aren't true, of course, he's never thought of Anakin in that way, but that wise Yoda would assume such of him still pains him.

Yoda says, "Kept apart, you must be."

Obi-Wan's heart plummets into an icy pit. There will be no deferrals, no Council deliberations. He starts to pull into himself, but Yoda's next words drum on his skull like cloudbursts off the coasts of Corellia.

"Sound of abilities, you are, among the best of us, you have been—but no longer a place in the High Temple, you have. Some place else, you must go." Yoda stops there and falls into contemplation.

For far too long.

 _Where?_ Obi-Wan nearly snaps, rankled at him for drawing this out.

Master Yoda looks at him reproachfully. Obi-Wan evens his expression, but it's too late.

"Mastery of your passions, you no longer possess," Yoda accuses. "Secluded, you must be. To the Temple of Sathur, you will go."

After these words, Yoda clasps his paws on his stick and studies Obi-Wan's reaction to this pronouncement.

He does not give him any. Obi-Wan doesn't know if he will ever see anyone in this Temple ever again, and he won't let his last impression be of a Jedi brought low by begging and bowing to be placed anywhere in the galaxy but the Sathurian Temple.

"Familiar with it, you are?" Yoda asks as Obi-Wan stares impassively at the floor.

"Yes," he says.

"Lost yourself, you have. Perhaps there, find Obi-Wan Kenobi, you may." Yoda's ears collapse. He stands heavily.

"What of Anakin?" Obi-Wan asks. "He hasn't completed his training."

"Your concern, he is not," Yoda says, but then sighs. "A new master, he will have."

A great, hot, frothing rush crests over Obi-Wan. Out of every blow, previous and forthcoming, this seems to land the heaviest.

"After the child is born, under a new master, continue the boy's training will," Yoda says, as if it didn't tear Obi-Wan apart completely the first time.

 _It is for the best, it is for the best, it is for_ —

"And what of the child?" Obi-Wan forces out.

Yoda strokes his chin. "Strong in the Force, they will be. Yes. Perhaps a Jedi, they may become."

"Can—"

Yoda holds up his paw. "Leave immediately to the Sathurian Temple, you must. Further instruction there, you will find. Answer more of your questions, I cannot."

Yoda turns from him.

"Just one more, then. May I say goodbye to Anakin?" And Force help him, Obi-Wan does beg for this.

Yoda stops. He lowers his head. Perhaps Obi-Wan should be grateful Yoda would consider such a thing. Perhaps he should be thankful he will still be a fragment of the Order, that he hasn't been cast onto the streets or outright imprisoned.

But he feels only a bitter burn in his throat.

"Approve, I do not," Yoda says simply, and leaves Obi-Wan standing there alone.

* * *

Anakin is asleep when Obi-Wan enters their quarters.

He stares at his padawan for several moments. Anakin still wears his outer robes, as if he'd simply tossed himself back in bed after taking off from the Room of a Thousand Fountains. He lies curled, his arms thrown up around his head. He's clasped his braid in one hand, completing a strange sort of golden ouroboros.

Obi-Wan sits carefully on the side of his bed. He doesn't want to wake him just yet, but Anakin's long lashes dance and then lift.

Dark blue eyes find his, and it seems Obi-Wan does not have to say anything at all.

Anakin whitens and sits up. His hand goes to his heart. "Master," he says weakly. "Master, what have you done?"

"I'm being sent away," he tells Anakin.

"No." Anakin struggles out of the covers. "No, no."

Caught up in robes and sheets, he slips leaving his bed. Obi-Wan rights him, his gasp gusting Anakin's hair. For a moment, he feels Anakin's fast heartbeat through his back.

Anakin jerks away from him. "How could you do this?"

"It's what's best for you," Obi-Wan says. "It was right."

"Shut _up!_ None of this is right!"

"Calm down," he says to Anakin gently. "I haven't been exiled."

Anakin raises his head, mouthing Obi-Wan's words. "What? Not exiled?"

"I've been assigned to another Temple to be kept apart from you."

"Another Temple? Where?" Anakin demands.

Obi-Wan shakes his head. "It doesn't matter. It's better you don't know."

" _WHERE!"_ Anakin roars.

"I cannot tell you," Obi-Wan insists.

Anakin stares at him, his eyes switching between his own. Obi-Wan feels the Force move against him, and for a startling, brilliant second feels Anakin's presence touch his mind. Just a sliver, only a finger of blinding light.

Even as his mind leaps to greet his padawan's, Anakin is gone as if he never was.

"You're afraid, Master," Anakin whispers. His eyes tick left and right under his furrowed brow.

And then he loses his last bit of color. "Not Sathur. Not there. They wouldn't send you _there_."

Obi-Wan sighs. He takes his credit chip from his belt.

"What did you tell them? What did you _tell_ them?" Anakin's voice is a tremoring wail. "How can they do this? They're sending you away to that place? You're the best of all of them! They can't do this!"

"Anakin, please take this," Obi-Wan says, offering him the chip. "You'll need money."

Anakin shakes his head so hard his braid whips his cheeks. A shredded sob bursts from his lips. " _No!_ It's all my fault! _I_ should be the one sent away! I'm not letting this happen. I'll go tell them what I did, I'll go—"

Obi-Wan crosses the space between them and clasps Anakin's shoulders in his hands. Hard. " _No_ , Anakin. Do not even think about it."

Tears creep down Anakin's young face. "You can't leave me, Master. I'm all alone. I can't do this by myself. I _need_ you. The child, they're going to take it from me. I've seen it."

"No, padawan," he urges gently. "The child will be a Jedi, Yoda's told me so."

"You never _listen!_ It's all lies. Something horrible is coming." Anakin bares his teeth. "To sith hells with all of them! I _hate_ them! I hate it here! I always have!"

Anakin looks at him with wild hope, "Let's leave, Master, together. We can go anywhere—The Outer Rim, a billion planets, Wild Space. Another galaxy! _Please_."

"Anakin, _you are my life's work_. You are the only thing I've ever been proud of. This is your future. I won't let you throw it away."

"Master, _please_."

Obi-Wan holds Anakin's face and eases his tears from his cheeks. "Anakin, when I'm gone from the world, the only part of me that will remain is you, and... the child you carry." Obi-Wan lets out a breath. "You are most precious to me. That is why I must go."

" _Master_ ," Anakin cries, and then buries his crumbling face in Obi-Wan's shoulder.

He gathers Anakin to him. He strokes the back of his precious golden head. "Don't give up, my padawan. Promise that you'll continue your training and complete the Trials. Promise you'll be the Jedi I know you can still be."

Anakin stiffens. Slowly, he lifts his head from Obi-Wan's robes and pins him with burning blue eyes. "Why are you talking like you're never coming back?"

Obi-Wan closes Anakin's hand around his credit chip. He smiles sadly. "I will likely not be allowed back to this Temple for several years."

"Years," Anakin's mouth laughs.

Obi-Wan doesn't like the look of him. "Calm down," he says. "It isn't imprisonment, which is more than I could've hoped for."

"It is a prison!" Anakin shouts. "I've heard what happens in such a place, Obi-Wan. It's _worse_. You can't take responsibility for what happened, it was me, it was me, it was _me_."

"It wasn't you," Obi-Wan says. "I have to pay this price, Anakin, and I'm willing to, to keep you safe. If the Order knew what happened, they could never understand such a thing. They already mistrust you. Do you understand?"

"How can I?" Anakin cries. "First my mother, then Qui-Gon, and now I'm going to lose you, Obi-Wan? I can't do this again! I _can't!"_

Anakin claws his fingers into Obi-Wan's shoulders. They staple through his thick robes with such force Anakin's muscles tremble with tension. His brows pinch tight and his nostrils flare with his furious breaths.

"Anakin..." Obi-Wan starts to step away from him, but Anakin's fingers twist in his robes—

—and his eyes lock onto Obi-Wan's throat.

"Don't," Obi-Wan says, shoving his hand into Anakin's face, his little and ring finger scraping slick bared teeth.

The world tips over. Obi-Wan's back cracks onto the floor. All breath flees from his lungs. He kicks out and slams the heel of his hand into Anakin's nose.

The warm weight on top of him growls and then fingers dig savagely into his hair and force his head to the side, his neck—

Anakin's hot breath—

Obi-Wan snatches Anakin's braid and twists it around his fingers. He viciously jerks it taut from his scalp.

Anakin screams and grabs his wrist.

Obi-Wan gasps through the cracks of Anakin's fingers over his mouth.

His heart throbs in his exposed throat.

Anakin hits his arm several times trying to loosen his grip on his hair. Pain lances all the way up Obi-Wan's shoulder into his ribs, but he only stretches Anakin's braid further from his head. The blue and red bands snap off inside his grip.

He's pulled Anakin so far over his face fills his vision. For an instant, he meets his padawan's eyes in their struggle, and Anakin's visage of misery flattens into fixed determination.

" _Stop!_ What are you _doing?"_ Obi-Wan shouts. "Take back control of yourself!"

But it's hopelessly muffled in Anakin's palm.

Anakin drives the base of his hand into Obi-Wan's chest, straightens, and snaps his head away from his braid. It rips from his scalp with a sobbed howl and the sound of tearing hair.

Now Obi-Wan only holds what's left of his padawan.

He is still staring at the gleaming, gold thread snaked around his fingers when Anakin's teeth slice through his skin. They drive deep near the vein housing Obi-Wan's beating heart.

The pain comes like a death wail. It burns in every piece of him until it ends as soon as it began.

Their minds meet in galactic collision. Obi-Wan is not consumed, but made bigger, much bigger, his arms merging with Anakin's, the black holes at their centers swallowing one another to form a supermassive dark heart. All things are thrown from their trajectory or spun into tidal tails and silent explosions rock the both of them—the ends to billions of stellar masses and the birth of billions more as they learn to spin together for the first time.

 _Master_ , Obi-Wan hears from very far away, wherever such a capacity to hear lies—somewhere out there beyond the accretion disk and in the depths of dark space where they are physical beings at war.

Yet, by the mainsprings of gravity and time and the Force itself, they are irreparably wound together.

 _MASTER_ , unbearably close now, deafeningly loud, a strum to Obi-Wan's very being that sends a tsunami of light from one end of the Force to the other.

A splitting sensation comes from somewhere where he can feel. Maybe his head. It's much too small to contain such a thing. Anakin fills his mind with no space to breathe. What he had used to have to seek out is painfully, intimately, held bare against him.

It is nothing he should ever know.

Obi-Wan feels a great wealth of emotions, from enraptured joy to endless despair, from both Anakin and himself with no way to extract his own identity in it all. He tries to make sense of where they separate, of what is him and what is Anakin.

That sonorous, soul-shaking _MASTER_ comes once again. Above and below and all around. It generates swells of energy, firing out hot superflares in its wake.

 _Quiet_ , Obi-Wan tells the light. _I am here_.

Because it is Anakin of course, this storming, solar thing. And he loves his padawan, despite this intrusive mingling of their minds. It's unjust and unfair and Obi-Wan could hate him.

He is him, in so many ways now.

Mates.

What has Anakin done?

It shouldn't be.

Obi-Wan opens his eyes to this changed world.

It is dark.

He flits his gaze around in blankness. Perhaps he's gone blind from Anakin's presence. His head still pulses and his skin feels stretched over his skull. A flash comes every time he blinks.

Obi-Wan brings his fingers to his neck and feels a spongy slick surface slightly raised from his skin. It's not a bacta patch, but he can't place where he's felt the gummy substance before.

Air currents wash strangely over his face and ears as he turns his head. He feels his cheeks and blinks several times—flash, flash, flash—at the lack of bristles crinkling under his fingertips.

Smooth.

 _Shaved_.

He passes his palm above his ear and feels just the sharp spray of recently shorn hair scrape his palm.

Unease suffuses him and his breath starts to come rapidly. Yet Obi-Wan can't hear himself breathe.

He can't hear anything at all.

Obi-Wan struggles upwards on to his hands. His body feels weighty and mismatched. "Hello?" he calls, but not a single phoneme of his voice reaches his ears. He only feels his throat and chest vibrate uselessly.

Stars, he can't _see_ anything.

Where is he? What is this?

Has he gone mad?

Is he dead?

Obi-Wan stands. It's a struggle to keep from toppling in the dark. He walks with his arms outstretched.

Several paces forward, Obi-Wan's palms come up against what feels like cold duracrete. It hums at his touch—Force-resistant.

 _A prison cell?_ he asks the light.

An image springs to life behind Obi-Wan's eyes. A spiraling, crumbling construction shooting to the sky on a dismal sunless island. Its bed is dark sand and jagged rocks sieged by the black, frothing breakers of the Kursing Sea.

Obi-Wan sinks along the wall. It scrapes his skin all the way down.

The picture dissipates in ripples. Anakin's glowing presence dims with its departure—Obi-Wan feels his fear in several sharp bursts to his heart.

 _I'm all right_ , he soothes him. Obi-Wan has the distinct impression Anakin's started to cry somewhere faraway.

But in the Temple of Sathur, it is him who weeps.


	5. Chapter 5

Much time passes in the soundless darkness. There are no windows, not even a crack of a door. Obi-Wan's run his hands corner-to-corner and wall-to-wall and found nothing but the same insipid stone.

No food or water. No refresher. Not even a cot. Between timeless stretches of his unfulfilled bodily needs, he sleeps sitting up against the rough, hard wall.

Anakin is a constant presence with him. At times, his frightening light storm calms for several hours and Obi-Wan supposes he's sleeping. This is when the blank darkness presses on him and his stomach gnaws and his heart speeds. Unable to hear or see, he feels entombed in his own body.

 _A Jedi knows no fear_ , Obi-Wan repeats during these bouts. He hasn't been sent here to _die_. Someone will come soon. Someone will come with water.

Surely they must give him water.

Anakin roils in the Force.

Yes, he is awakening.

Obi-Wan's panic dies down even as Anakin's unremitting storm resumes its rotation. To be near such violence feels oddly safe, for all the times he's been swept up in its frenzy.

He touches over the sticky residue on his neck. _How did I get here?_ Obi-Wan asks the light.

A host of images is directed towards him then, some of them even moving—he sees himself from Anakin's eyes, lying with his torn neck below him, Anakin's trembling tan fingers dark on his skin as they trace his mating bite, then go to sweep Obi-Wan's hair from his face.

He watches himself push Anakin from him, standing with a low murmur of words. Blood has come from his nose as well, and he teeters on his feet. Anakin tries to steady him, but Obi-Wan pushes his hands away, and retrieves his cloak.

Like a badly shot holodrama, the world in Anakin's eyes cuts between another handful of recollections—Obi-Wan with his hood drawn, shoving Anakin away; Anakin's sobs and pleas; his fingers holding onto Obi-Wan's robes, begging from the floor. The lens he looks up at Obi-Wan with is blurry with tears and hysterical red haze, and as Obi-Wan watches his shadowy self pry Anakin's fingers from his clothes, he sees the blood is gone from his neck and a square only slightly whiter than his own skin is plastered to his throat.

And Anakin is screaming for him not to go, to not leave him, he needs him, he's _sorry_ —

 _Stop_ , Obi-Wan tells Anakin, desperate to be free from his uncontrolled emotions, utterly drowning in them.

The memory stops playing and leaves him in a deep silence. It takes him a few moments to recall who he is, and that he's not the boy who threw himself on the floor and clutched his master's cloak to keep him from leaving.

 _YOU WANTED TO SEE_.

 _I know_. Though Obi-Wan has no memory of it, and he's not sure why. He considers the image of himself with blood running from his nose and wonders if Anakin's forced coupling of their minds could have overloaded any capacity to remember the aftermath of such an explosion.

Obi-Wan presses on the gummy material stuck to his throat. _Why did you have to do this? Both of us are in so much more danger because of this, Anakin_.

 _THEY WON'T KNOW_ , the light thunders.

Anakin shows him what's ostensibly a rendering of Obi-Wan himself on the deep black sands of the Sathurian Temple. It lacks much detail, and Obi-Wan's hair and beard and Jedi robes are still intact, but the expected red welt of a mating mark is absent from his neck.

 _SYNTHFLESH_.

There would be no scar, then. No sign it had ever happened.

Obi-Wan lets his fingers drop from his neck. Relief unfurls some of the tension in his being.

 _Does the Council suspect anything?_ he wonders.

 _ONLY A DISTURBANCE_.

Obi-Wan's head throbs. _Anakin, can you please... think quietly?_

 _I AM_.

 _Your voice in my mind is like ten hundred blaster cannons_.

Silence resumes.

* * *

Obi-Wan's mouth is dry. The moisture's gone from his corneas. It hurts to blink and swallow and it hurts to move.

This is when light pierces his eyes.

Obi-Wan throws his arm up and scuttles backwards on an inexplicably smooth floor. His ears burst with a sudden rise in sound, as if he's stepped off a tall turbolift.

Footsteps near him. A gloved hand seizes his wrist.

Obi-Wan instinctively revolts from the touch, jerking his arm in a grip that only crushes his bones together to keep hold of him. Obi-Wan hisses through his teeth, tears easing from the corners of his eyes as he struggles to open them in the burn of glaring lights.

"For your disobedience you'll have no bread," a voice that seems to come from a white sky above dispassionately informs him.

The gloved hand wrenches Obi-Wan forward by his arm.

Something clamps tight around his wrist. Something sharp. His fingers splay as it presses into the soft underpinnings of his arm.

"Water," is all Obi-Wan has a mind to say, but no sound leaves his lips. They split at the corners.

He hears a flat laugh at his effort. "A defiler of the Force does not speak. Your voice is shameful to It."

Obi-Wan slits his eyes open to a searingly white world. For a moment, he thinks he's both mute and blind, but as he stares upwards he makes out the lines of a white-robed figure above him.

His focus sharply narrows as a round object fills his vision. "Drink."

No sooner does the word leave the man's lips than Obi-Wan shoots his hand out to take the cup.

It darts just as quickly out of reach.

"A Jedi shall not know greed." And the shrouded figure tilts the cup to the floor.

Water pours and splashes Obi-Wan's knees. " _Don't!"_ he pleads belatedly, but it's just a motion of his peeling lips.

The gloved hand blessedly rights the cup before all of its contents stream out. It fills Obi-Wan's sight once more, the rim pressing into his nose.

Obi-Wan stares at it. His fingers twitch. The wasted water is seeping through his thin pants. It's cold. He can almost feel it coating his desiccated throat. He would almost lick it from this floor.

"Take it with your disciplined hand."

Obi-Wan pauses before moving, considering if this is another trick. He slowly extends his arm. In his clearing vision, Obi-Wan sees this _discipline_ is a black bracelet, held aloft his skin by long, thin pins—hundreds of them, as closely packed together as the baleen plates of Cartusion whales.

To wrap his fingers around the cup means his wrist must flex. As it does, the needles poke into his flesh. Blood races down his arm.

But he has the water.

Obi-Wan brings the cup to his mouth and blessedly lifegiving liquid waterfalls over his tongue and floods his throat. It doesn't matter that it's gritty and tastes of speeder coolant and there are only several mouthfuls of it left. For a few moments, he's not thirsty, not at the mercy of his flesh, and Obi-Wan doesn't think he's ever been more grateful for such a simple thing.

But then there is no more water.

He starts to shake the cup for any stray droplets, but gloved fingers snatch it away from him.

Obi-Wan looks up at this horrible individual and for the first time sees him clearly.

The tall man is dressed in crisp Jedi robes. From his tunics to his boots his clothing is stark white. Only the hinged hilt of his folded lightsaber pike stands amiss his snowy vestments.

A cap of silvery hair is slicked to his skull, at odds with a face that could be no more than thirty years of age. Beneath sharp brows sit the long, pitiless eyes of a vornskr. A short, brisk beard brings his chin to an icy point.

Obi-Wan cannot help but think despite his coloring this man looks a bit like himself.

Like he did.

"You will address me as Master Pycen once I grant you use of your voice," Master Pycen says. "And I may never do so. The Force will guide my hand as it guides all of us who share in the Light. Here, those who are drawn towards the Dark under the delusion of power or for lowly pleasures of the flesh will toil the path back to the Ashla."

Behind this Master Pycen passes another in robes, but this Jedi wears all black. Trailing this dark figure is a sparsely-dressed, bony woman who keeps her face tilted to the floor. The only color to her skin is the black blot of a tattoo on her brittle chest.

And the crusted blood on her arm leading to the same dark maw puncturing Obi-Wan's wrist.

This woman raises her head and swivels it to look down at him on the floor. Their eyes meet. Recognition suffuses her face and her pale mouth parts.

She stares at him until her and the one in black robes round a corner at the end of the duracrete hall.

"Think nothing of your previous title—it means nothing here."

Pycen's voice draws Obi-Wan's eyes back to him. The white-robed Jedi stares down at him with clinical eyes. "I know of your crime. You are the Shamed. You are the Disgraced. The Craven. You've known everything a Jedi should not. Here, your corruption will be bled from you."

Pycen presses something on the wall next to him.

"First you will learn your flesh matters not."

Obi-Wan's stony cell blinks back into existence. A high-pitched frequency crackles in his ears and his hearing dies.

Once more silence. Once more blackness.

* * *

Obi-Wan warms his palms with his breath then clasps his feet. It's already cold in the cell and now his limbs have turned frigid and clammy. Without food his body's deemed keeping his arms and legs warm unnecessary.

He puts his hands between his legs and clenches his thighs around them. He barely feels the pain of the needles anymore. He's almost glad for the drops of warmth. Sometimes he rubs them on his flaking lips.

Obi-Wan groans and curls tight over himself. There's no muscle that isn't stiff and his bones radiate a constant ache.

When is Pycen coming back? What was it he said about bread? _Stars_ , Obi-Wan could've had some if he hadn't whipped for that blasted cup like a rabid shaupaut...

Obi-Wan clenches his freezing fingers. _No_ , this isn't right! How can this place be authorized by the Order? Jedi don't starve prisoners, and he's not even that. All the rumors of isolation and steel-fisted guards have fallen short to the actual atrocities being committed here.

What _is_ this place?

He takes slow breaths. He remembers the woman he saw, undoubtedly another of _the Shameful_ , following that Jedi in the black robes. It must mean that Obi-Wan too, would be let out to walk sometime.

To somewhere.

A flashing comes from behind his eyes.

 _Good morning, Anakin_.

Obi-Wan lays his chin on his forearms and waits for him to reply. This act, Anakin's presence, it's become as familiar as watching the sun rise on Coruscant.

He's wondered how he'd be faring if Anakin hadn't mated them, the fact that he'd be truly alone in here...

He tries not to dwell on such thoughts.

Some of Obi-Wan's ailments fade into the background as he immerses himself in their bond. He shouldn't, he shouldn't encourage this impropriety, but Anakin is _warm_.

 _Hello_ , Obi-Wan says again, letting himself go deeper into this new form of meditation. He stretches himself towards Anakin in what he'd like to consider a hug, but it is of course more intimate than that.

But he senses Anakin is holding himself off. Maybe he's busy with some task, or in the process of falling asleep once more—

No. Anakin is _looking_ at him, through the lens of a giant fiery eye.

 _YOU ARE IN PAIN_.

 _I'm only hungry_ , Obi-Wan tells him, starting to draw away from his light.

 _THIRST. ACHES. SUFFERING!_ The fiery eye widens. Anakin's voice screams. _SOMETHING ON YOUR WRIST!_

Their luminous landscape shakes. It breathes, in a cacophony of roaring winds all around him.

Obi-Wan covers his ears. _Please, calm down! You'll deafen me, Anakin!_

 _WHAT IS THIS? WHAT ARE THEY DOING TO YOU?_

Obi-Wan presses the pins on his discipline. His awareness shifts back into his chilled and neglected flesh. He breathes hard into the dark. He focuses on the inflation of his dried lungs, the pain, the aches, the blood falling from his fingers and going _dripdrip_ on the stone.

 _Dripdrip_.

Wait.

He can _hear_ that.

Bright light in his peripheral draws his eyes upwards. Obi-Wan tilts his head up.

A gaping, zagging crack stretches up the wall he's sitting against. It splinters all the way across the ceiling. In the spill of light, plumes of dust refract prisms of colors through his eyelashes.

His eyes meet another's. Through the break, the man in dark robes stares down at him.

* * *

A hot hand plants on Obi-Wan's naked back and shoves him forward. He stumbles into the room, smacking his bound hands into his own groin painfully.

The Jedi in black robes catches his elbow and brings him to a jerky halt. "That's close enough, thing."

This room is carpeted and Obi-Wan's toes dig into the floor. Shades of dark green color the carpet and walls, and an expansive window makes up the back wall, looking out at the blustery black Kursing Sea.

Before him is Master Pycen sitting at a short, neatly-ordered transparisteel desk. "Why is a Shameful tainting my carpets, Rothas?" Pycen asks shortly, not looking up from his datapad.

"This Kenobi thing," Rothas says, shaking Obi-Wan by his elbow hard enough to make his teeth clack, "was trying to escape. It put a crack in its Mitha as long as an Anacondan and just about as wide."

Pycen looks up. His slitty eyes narrow further. "That's impossible."

"Go _look_ at it, Pycen!" Rothas shouts. Obi-Wan jumps at his unexpected outburst. "This Kenobi thing split that crystal in two. I saw it happen."

"That relic is Force-resistant and he has no weapon." Pycen scans over Obi-Wan, his fingers pinching the ends of his beard. "You can't mean to tell me it's _broken_."

"It sure as sithspit looks like it!" Rothas hisses. "There's big pieces of it all over the floor and it won't seal. It's _dead_."

Pycen stands. He takes a moment to smooth down his robes. "I will see it. Bring him, brother."

"Get _moving!"_ Rothas screams when Obi-Wan fails to turn the second the last syllable leaves Pycen's lips, and Obi-Wan exits the room the same way he entered it.

This time Rothas uses both hands to shove him. This time it does send him careening towards the floor.

Obi-Wan's chin and the rest of his sore bones impact the duracrete with all the force of being flattened beneath a bantha foot. His teeth cleave through his tongue. Blood flows around the silent bark of pain that rips from his windless lungs.

"Get _up!"_ That dreadful man screeches. "How dare you spill your foul blood on the floor?"

The hem of a white cloak sweeps in front of Obi-Wan. "It was you who put him there, brother," Pycen says sternly. "How many times do I have to tell you? Don't touch the Unclean."

A boot presses into Obi-Wan's shoulder. "Get up. You'll have plenty of time for prostrating later."

Obi-Wan swallows down the rest of the blood in his mouth and stiffly brings himself upright again.

"Walk in _front_ of us," Rothas says through his teeth. "If you try anything, I'll burn the skin off your back with my lightsaber."

Obi-Wan takes his designated point and puts one icy foot in front of the other. His bitten tongue has started to swell up in his mouth. With each step, his vision seems to fill with more and more sparkles.

The trip back to his cell, the Mitha, is a fathomless stretch of time dotted with the faces of other so-called Shameful—thinned out hollows of people with dirty feet and black, yawning ink staining their spindly chests. Each seems more shocked than the last at the sight of him, Obi-Wan Kenobi, being marched through the passages of the Sathurian Temple well on his way to becoming just as they are.

He wonders what must go through their minds. He wonders what they must think he did to end up here.

Obi-Wan steps over a long, keen shard of opalescent crystal. He turns his head and finds the rest of his cracked containment, the _Mitha_.

He's never seen such a thing like it. It doesn't appear to be duracrete at all. On the outside it seems a spherical crystalline structure.

And it is completely transparent.

He feels vaguely sick recalling the times he's had to relieve himself on the floor. Privacy, like the darkness and the silence and the corners, had been nothing but an illusion created by this strange artifact.

Now, it's cracked like an egg.

Custodial droids move aside for Master Pycen, who waves his hand in front of the immense crystal before edging his way in through the split.

Obi-Wan swallows more of his own blood and hunches over himself. His heart beats emphatically in his ears and his eyes pulse.

Suddenly, he wants nothing more than to just sit down.

"Don't fall over again, thing," comes Rothas' reedy voice.

Obi-Wan looks over at him, standing there with his hands on his hips like an overbearing rotcrow. It's the presence of a politician, not a Jedi.

 _You don't deserve those robes_ , he thinks.

The more Obi-Wan stares at him the more his intense dislike festers. Rothas, like Pycen, is pale-featured, a grey pallor to his skin making him look deathly ill. Straight, milky blond hair falls to his shoulders, the front portions fastened away from his face with orange ties and braided down the back. His cruel eyes are such a cold shade of grey all color seems to have drained from them long ago, two moonlets sunk in purple bands of space dust.

Stretched above his beardless chin is a boiling red mouth.

"Put your eyes to the floor, thing," Rothas hisses at him.

But Obi-Wan doesn't look away. Rothas takes a furious step towards him. "You _insolent_ —"

"Rothas! Keep away from him!"

They both look to Master Pycen emerging from the cracked Mitha, a purposeful, edgy look to his eyes that has Rothas lunging away and Obi-Wan's spine straightening.

Pycen crosses the distance between them in three long strides and takes Obi-Wan by his throat. "How did you break it?"

"Don't _touch_ it, Pycen!"

Pycen shakes Obi-Wan by his neck. "Tell me!"

Their faces are so close Pycen's sharp breaths gust his bare cheeks.

Grey sparkles dance in Obi-Wan's eyes as Pycen pinches his arteries shut.

Obi-Wan moves his numbing lips uselessly. Even if he had an answer, he can't give it to him.

"How in sith hells did you crack that Mitha?" Pycen asks in a furious whisper. "It's made from crystal thicker than your head, a hundred times the strength of kyber. _Everlasting_. No weapon can dent it. No amount of Force can shatter it. Master Yoda couldn't put a _scratch_ on its lattice, and you, you almost broke it in _half_. How did you do this?"

Pycen watches his lips intently, waiting for an answer. Obi-Wan shapes his mute mouth around the words _I don't know_.

Master Pycen growls. "Lying will only serve you worse punishment."

Obi-Wan's breath wheezes out of his nose. His heart thumps under Pycen's constricting hand. He cannot feel his own body. He doesn't even know if he's still standing on his feet.

A pressure is mounting behind his eyes.

" _Stars!"_ Rothas' hateful voice gasps in exhilaration. "Look at it! It's going as blue as a Rutian Twi'lek!"

" _Tell me!"_

As the world darkens at the edges, an eruption of sunlight spears through Obi-Wan's temple.

 _OBI-WAN!_

A hairline fracture forms in the glimmering surface of the Mitha. The crack quickly spiders outwards and the crisp splintering of crystal ruptures the air.

" _How are you doing that!"_ All Obi-Wan sees are Pycen's eyes, his own eyes, blazing through him, blazing like the fire in his brain—

No! Consonants, vowels, what do they feel like? Obi-Wan moves his lips again. _It_...

... _wasn't_...

... _me_.

There, that is the truth. Pycen stares at him utterly baffled, his image swimming in Obi-Wan's eyes, nearly swallowed by glowing dendrites of raw Force fire.

The Mitha shakes and then bursts into a cloud of powdery prismatic light.

Obi-Wan's eyes fall shut.

 _Obi-Wan! What's happening? It's dark! IT'S DARK!_

 _Above the flesh_ , he thinks dizzily. _I rose above the flesh_.


	6. Chapter 6

Obi-Wan awakes on a stiff bed. His mind plays a cruel trick on him—in his first conscious moments he's back at the High Temple, bathed in the early light of dawn. He even starts to imagine the motions of his morning routine and what he must do today.

His eyes snap open.

Obi-Wan can only be glad that this time, he's not met with absolute blackness. Above him is a durasteel ceiling. He follows its sheen to a small, warm glowplate occupying the ceiling as if a far sun burning in the night sky.

As he wipes his eyes, he finds those damn pins are still circling his wrist. In the low light, the crusted blood looks like black rot.

A whisper tickles Obi-Wan's ears. He turns his head side to side to get rid of it. Then he realizes it's coming from within.

He carefully steps into that golden pool.

 _Master?_ comes a low tone.

Anakin's voice is so real and close Obi-Wan has to open his eyes to check his padawan isn't lying right beside him.

 _You're not quite as boisterous as before_ , is all Obi-Wan can think to remark. _Have you_ —

 _What is going on?_

Obi-Wan comes up short at Anakin's abrupt question. Instantaneously flashes of memory come to him in the form of a choking hand around his throat, but he's quick to tamp these thoughts down and out of reach.

 _You were dying_ , Anakin continues, and Obi-Wan winces at the pain even the words cause Anakin, a miserable moan in the Force.

 _Just losing consciousness_ , Obi-Wan tells him. _I am fine now, Anakin_.

 _No, Master, I felt it! There was such darkness and no air to breathe. It was so awful!_

 _Stars!_ How did he feel that? Just as he knew there was something on Obi-Wan's wrist...

 _I am one with you now, Master_. Anakin sounds sad.

 _That doesn't explain it, I'm afraid. The Force is behaving in strange ways. Impossible things have happened_.

 _What impossible things?_

 _Violent ones_ , Obi-Wan thinks. _My cell, this... artifact called a Mitha, supposedly indestructible... it burst apart. I couldn't have done it_.

 _Then it was the Will of the Force_.

 _I don't think so_.

Their summery space shimmers. _You think it's me_.

 _Yes_ , Obi-Wan admits. _But I don't think you're intending to do so. Somehow your power is channeled through me, with me... and becomes bigger than both of us_.

Anakin nears him. Obi-Wan feels his searing heat warm him to the bone. Tendrils of light wrap around him. They bring a comfort that soaks into Obi-Wan's being. _Why are you afraid?_ Anakin wonders.

 _Anakin, how can I not be? This is dangerous. We've created a Disturbance. The Force shouldn't be this way. Something is wrong_.

 _I don't see how this is bad, Master. You're viewing this too negatively_.

 _Because I don't want it!_ He extracts himself from Anakin's radiating warmth. _I didn't want this! It's too much, Anakin. You shouldn't be in my mind. It's as if you're taking over me_.

 _Don't say that, Master. I can't help being like this. So much is happening, all the time_...

A mechanical whir reaches Obi-Wan's ears and draws him from his mind. For several moments, all he sees is a thin, humanoid shape moving in the low light. He presses his back into the wall.

Then it passes under the glowplate and Obi-Wan lets out a breathless sigh of relief.

The service droid cocks its square head at him before wheeling over to his bedside.

Obi-Wan's heart leaps.

It's carrying a serving platter.

"What's that you've got there?" His voice is nothing more than a rusty croak, odd in his ears, but his smile cracks his lips open.

He can speak again.

"Nourishment," the droid warbles.

Obi-Wan starts to reach for the offered tray, then remembers where he is. He just barely reins himself in. His breath comes fast through his nose as he looks at the food. It seems to be only slices of bread and two cuts of fruit, but he knows it will be the best bread and fruit he's ever tasted.

He can't risk this.

"May I have the tray?"

"Yes."

"And I can eat all the food on the tray?" Obi-Wan presses.

He gets the sense the droid is looking at him oddly through its single photoreceptor. "Yes."

Obi-Wan blows out a large breath then reaches carefully for the food. He curls his fingers around the tray and brings it into his lap. His mouth would flood with saliva if it had any to spare.

He phrases his next question carefully, "Water? Am I allowed that?"

The droid sticks a metal finger towards the dim space next to him. Obi-Wan squints and makes out a slab he hadn't seen before. On top of it rests a tall glass he definitely overlooked.

"Oh," he says. "Thank you. Can I—"

The droid makes several short beeps then quickly wheels back out the door. It whirs closed once more, and huffs and clunks as a number of locks set in place.

Thank the Force. Obi-Wan sits up straight, picks up a wedge of dark fruit, and shoves it between his teeth. Juices fill his mouth, more sour than sweet and nothing he's ever had before, but it doesn't matter.

It could be bantha droppings for all he cares.

He chews the fruit to a pulp seeds and all. As he swallows, a tingling rush spreads from his head to his toes and his head lightens. Tears press at Obi-Wan's eyes. Days ago he thought he'd be spending the rest of his life entombed in a black bubble.

Thank you, he says for his bed. Thank you, he says for his light. Thank you, he says for each bite of food. Thank the _Force_ for each drop of water.

After he's finished, Obi-Wan rubs the bedding between his fingers, feeling its weave. A thin pallet laid over a thick board, yet a luxury.

He sets the empty tray and glass on the slab and swings his legs onto the floor. His feet touch durasteel. It's not warm, but it's not cold crystal, and it seems so much gentler.

Obi-Wan stands and walks under the glowplate. It covers him like a wash of fire. He raises his arm to revel at the shadows light can cast.

* * *

Obi-Wan awakes to a flurry of voices and the world being turned upside down. His head smacks into the floor and the naked flesh of his back squeals as he's dragged bodily across it.

He kicks his legs and attempts to jerk his arms from whoever has clamped their hands around them. "What's going on! What are you doing!"

The bottom edge of the door scrapes each bump of Obi-Wan's spine. "Stop!" He smacks his heels into the floor and tries to twist to the side. His shoulders wrench tight and his breath seethes through his teeth.

"Don't make it worse for yourself," a cold voice says. Obi-Wan strains his neck to see his two captors in their white and black robes. Both have a gloved hand clamped around his flesh.

"A boot to the head would knock it out." The owner of Obi-Wan's left arm presses on his discipline. The pins go deeper into Obi-Wan's wrist than ever before and the world wobbles. A slash of red lips cuts through his vision. "But that would defeat the purpose of your little excursion, thing."

"What is this?" Obi-Wan hisses, but they do not stop and answer him. He's ceaselessly hauled across the hallway floors. Blood flings from his arm and paints his face. "Where are you taking me?"

Fresh terror opens its jaws and descends on Obi-Wan's heart—the new room had just been part of a wretched little game.

 _Not another one_ , he thinks wildly. _Don't put me back in the dark_.

It would be the way of this horrible Temple, to let him have a margin of comfort then strip it away.

Obi-Wan's so petrified by this possibility, this likelihood, he can do little else but let these awful men drag him back to the dark.

He closes his eyes and latches onto the faithful chant.

A Jedi shall not know fear.

A Jedi shall not know fear.

A Jedi shall not know.

Fear.

A Jedi.

The tang of his own blood seeps through his lips.

 _I shall not know fear_.

"Here we are," Rothas' oily voice says with immeasurable glee.

Obi-Wan's lifted upwards then forced down onto a table. Its chilly surface sucks the warmth from his flesh and he shivers.

His right arm is pulled taut and something far stronger than fingers constricts his wrist, bolting it tight to the table.

"Hurry up and get his other arm."

Obi-Wan's heart beats in his ears. He doesn't want to see what is happening. He doesn't want to see what awaits him now.

He opens his eyes to this new horror.

Obi-Wan flinches back with nowhere to go and the pain that comes as his discipline dives through his skin vanishes in the face of what's looming over him.

Suspended on a durasteel frame above him is a black contraption housing many more pins.

Obi-Wan's stomach roils. Acid fills his mouth.

He throws his head to the right and catches the eyes of the man in white robes—Pycen. Obi-Wan finds little else in his flinty stare than the discernment one would spare a particularly strange insect.

"You're going to _kill me?"_ Obi-Wan snaps.

Rothas makes a spitty sound of disgust. "Cold karking hell, I hate its voice. You shouldn't have given it back to the stupid thing, Pycen."

"You're not going to be killed," Pycen says.

"What is this then? Torture?" Obi-Wan pulls at his trapped wrists and slides his heels uselessly on the table's slippery surface. "The Jedi Order can't condone this. What in sith hells are you _doing?"_

Black-gloved fingers snatch his jaw and twist his head to the left. " _Shut up!"_ Rothas hisses at him. Spittle blasts Obi-Wan's skin. "You wretched _disgrace!_ Instead of being grateful for your sithcursed voice, you use it to whine!"

Rothas tosses his head away and looks furiously at Pycen. "We should put it back where it belongs—in a cage! Not _promote_ it."

"He broke the Mitha, brother."

"Then tell the Council of its Sith sorcery and we'll weight the thing with duracrete and toss it in the Kursing!"

"I haven't sensed such Darkness," Pycen spits. "I tire of arguing with you about this matter, brother. Your lack of deference disgraces you. If you can't leash your tongue go shovel kyber with the Shameful."

Rothas' pale brows draw together and his red mouth sinks into a thin scratch. He looks down at Obi-Wan hatefully.

Before Obi-Wan can say anything more, Pycen stretches an arm over him. The white sleeve of his robe sags over Obi-Wan's face and blocks his sight.

Obi-Wan hears a metallic lurch and then a motor spurting to life. It fills the air with an awful buzz that seizes his beating heart.

Oh Force. Oh _please_ —

" _I_ wanted to start it!" Rothas squeals.

The hum grows louder. It's accompanied by rhythmic, ratcheting clicks, growing closer—

 _Descending_.

Obi-Wan's breath rushes out his nose. His teeth cage tight. Hot tears slip from the corners of his eyes and over his temples.

There is no pain, there is no pain, there is no pain, _thereisnopain—!_

The bones in his left shoulder vibrate. He jerks, his wrists snapping tight in their restraints.

A hot hand claps down over his mouth and forces his skull back to the table. Rothas hisses, "You better stay still or this thing will eat your arm."

And then a million droning pins set upon his flesh.

Obi-Wan screams into the black glove.

Each spindly needle pokes down deep and churns in his skin. The warm spray of his blood blasts his neck and chin and Pycen's white robes.

Obi-Wan's legs draw up tight and then kick out in all directions. A hot, electric blister fills between his eyes.

The table beneath him clatters.

"It's doing it again!"

"Hold him _still!"_

The nails move, drilling from Obi-Wan's shoulder across his left pectoral in excruciating whirls.

The bubble pops behind his eyes and energy bursts within him. It races through his core and arcs outwards to his limbs. Obi-Wan gasps and reflexively bunches his toes and fingers. His teeth chatter with the effort to contain this amount of Force, but the charge swiftly overwhelms his meager flesh.

His fingers spring apart.

A deafening _clap!_ resounds. The nails retract from his skin. The incessant jawing of the motor dies. Obi-Wan hears several sharp cracks and then large shards of its housing fall to his chest. Its durasteel body wobbles where it's anchored to the ceiling, its head of pins swinging off its spine.

Obi-Wan drives his wrists upwards into his restraints and they crumble around his carpals. He twists and rolls off the table just as the metal frame comes crashing down where he did lie screaming.

He breathes hard into the bloodslick crook of his arm.

Across from him is Master Pycen, collapsed against the wall. Blood drips from his forehead, over his slowly blinking right eye, to seep into his snowy beard.

They look at each other. He thinks Pycen almost smiles.

"Brother..." Pycen calls.

Obi-Wan hears a groan from behind him.

"...fetch the ink."


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N** : hey guys, first of all just wanted to say thank you to anyone who's left a review on this work! feedback really motivates me to keep going and posting every week. i'm sorry that the chapter lengths are kind of all over the place, I am used to writing short novella type stories and just splitting them up evenly, but this is my first truly novel-length work so bear with me as I feel my way around. there is a LONG chapter coming up next friday I can't wait to share :D :D

there are some time skips in this chapter if it isn't clear. thank you so much for reading!

* * *

Obi-Wan's muscles burn as he drives his vibrospade into the ground. The soft sand of the island, stained black with volcanic glass, belies a hard underbelly of packed magmatic rock.

Embedded in this cooled crust are veins of kyberite.

He's developed a sharp eye for the crystals' limpid faces. Perhaps the sharpest of all—he certainly doesn't need his eyes to see them. He feels their vibrant, trilling call even through the deepest fathoms of the planet.

Obi-Wan chips away around a particularly large piece of kyber. He's revealed nearly the entirety of it, but loosening it enough to pull it from the rock will take several more hours with such an insufficient tool.

In an instant he could lift it free with the Force, but Rothas keeps a cruel eye trained on the Shameful set to work in this horrid place.

It is especially cruel towards Obi-Wan, as Obi-Wan is sure he could just extend his arm and bring every single crystal within the planet to the surface.

 _And I would crush that place_ , he thinks, glancing at the dark spires stretching between the jaws of land and sky as if black strands of saliva.

Cold air dries the sweat from his back as quickly as it beads. There's always a breeze, always the incessant wind. It rolls off the sea in chilly breaths.

Nothing but skin now separates his bones from the blow. He's become a cadaverous figure like the rest of those who are given two slices of bread twice a week and water only if they fall unconscious on their shovels.

Obi-Wan forces his vibrospade deeper into the crystal's igneous shell. He squints as dust bathes his face and sharp slivers of rock fling upwards to lacerate arms insensate from continual vibration. At least he'll only feel all the little cuts afterwards, and at least large kyber such as this one are coveted. It'll earn him an extra meal, a trifling token for the amount of energy he has to expend excavating it.

His eyes scan the dark isle as he continues his monotonous task. Other Shameful litter the black sands—ghostly, remote skeletons toiling in large pits. One woman not far from him has collapsed into a pile of white sticks.

Obi-Wan thinks she might be dead.

They aren't allowed to speak to one another, anyway. If they do, they eat their bread with sand.

Rothas and Pycen are the only means of communication, if Obi-Wan is so masochistic to whip himself with their words.

Disgrace.

Shameful.

Thing.

 _Nothing_.

A low voice resonates between his ears, _No, you are my Master_.

Obi-Wan smiles as his secret connection flares, the luminous link he's gripped tighter over these long few months. His light, hidden away within his being and removed from this miserable place.

Anakin.

Since Obi-Wan's tattooing, his material reality seems more and more an accessory. The constant gnaw of his stomach and the scrape of his parched throat have faded from his cognizance, and the days have become rote, sucked of color and sensation. Yet, he keeps in mind he's been afforded quite an advantage over the rest of the Shamed—he is never really on the island as he dwells in the sunny mindscape him and Anakin share.

Just by their unsolicited mateship aspects of the Force Obi-Wan's never imagined existed have revealed themselves to him. The life-energy of the Galaxy is so clear and bare.

Naked.

 _Thank you, Anakin_. Obi-Wan puts his vibrospade down and wraps his hands around the nose of the crystal. It warms beneath his touch. The pins of his discipline shift within the flesh of his mangled wrist and vibrate with the living crystal's Force energy. Obi-Wan holds his palms there and pulls power into himself until his teeth chatter and Anakin likewise buzzes in his head.

 _Don't do that!_

Obi-Wan laughs quietly. As a result of his new attunement with the Force, kyber crystals seem to work as batteries.

He maps the position of Sathur's small sun then resumes the motions of clearing the crystal from the ground.

Anakin settles. _We are more powerful than twenty of those so-called Jedi, Master_.

Obi-Wan swings a look over his shoulder at Rothas shrieking at the woman still inert on the black sand. _Yes, this new power, it's earned me quite a bit of suspicion, Anakin. Have you heard anything from the Council?_

 _They mentioned it. I've told them it is a sign from the Force, but they don't listen to anything I have to say_. Anakin pauses. _They want to assign me a new master_.

Obi-Wan closes his eyes.

 _Never!_ Anakin bursts out. _I told them the only master I will accept is you and after our child is born you must be allowed back to Coruscant to finish my training_.

 _Anakin_...

 _I won't complete the Trials without you, Master_.

Obi-Wan sighs. He jabs his shovel furiously into the rock. _I trust you won't fail them, Anakin, even if you must go through them with a substitute. But, it may not all be so bleak—Pycen doesn't seem to think the anomalies are Dark. We can only hope it's him who whispers to the Council and not that louse_.

 _I don't know. What good could be in a man who chooses to oversee such a place?_

 _Yes... it is hard for me to stomach that the Order allows this to go on. Perhaps they've let this get out of hand_.

Furious red arcs flare around their bond. _I think it's running exactly as they intended it to_.

Obi-Wan doesn't want to consider that possibility.

* * *

By the time he's able to haul the crystal from its bed, the island's in darkness, and the only light comes from the windows of the Temple and the photoreceptors of a few service droids.

He covers the kyber with chromasheath. Its joyous song dims beneath the material, disappointed to be in the dark, and Obi-Wan almost feels sad—he can hear such things so clearly now, how the crystals dearly want to aid him. He thinks of the kyber in his own forfeited lightsaber left at the High Temple, and its twin lost forever to Theed's plasma power plant. He clenches his fist and can nearly feel the grip of his saber under his fingers.

He will hold it again.

As he's passing the wrapped kyber crystal off to a service droid, he meets Rothas's silvery eyes. In the dark, they gleam like poisonous drops of liquid. "You have quite the habit of finding the larger ones, don't you?"

"It seems I'm lucky," Obi-Wan says lightly.

"As if there was such a thing," Rothas scoffs. "There is only the Ashla, and you blaspheme It with every step, you disgrace!" The drops pool into thin, keen crescents. "There is a Dark source to your undue power, and we _will_ find it, thing."

 _Look no further than yourself for the Dark Side, you piece of bantha shit!_

"WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME!"

A flash blinds Obi-Wan. A lethal hum vibrates his eardrums, the only warning he gets before two yellow blades saw the air. He jumps back, searing energy singeing the hairs from his chest.

"How dare you! Insolent _maggot!"_ Rothas's pike once more spins towards him.

"What in sith hells are you doing?" Obi-Wan hisses, twisting away, his heart stuck in his throat. The crazed Jedi's skill with the pike is undeniable, its shoto blades whirling so fast as to be a circlet of gold light in the dark.

Rothas snarls and the ring coalesces into a single burning blade jabbing towards Obi-Wan's lower half. Obi-Wan jerks his leg to avoid being amputated below the knee and overbalances.

He crashes onto his back.

Rothas towers over him, his weapon poised above his head, its twin daggers dazzling suns in the night. His seething red lips are stretched into a grimace of hate and his colorless eyes are soaked in the solar hue of his plasma pike.

The Force bubbles within Obi-Wan and he feels compelled to lift his hand. _No, Anakin, no_ —

Spit froths around Rothas's mouth. "This is where you belong! On the ground, crawling like a filthy muckworm!"

Obi-Wan stares up at him. His fingers twitch—

Rothas barks a growl and lowers his pike. "You aren't even worth killing, you stupid pathetic thing. I'll be telling Pycen of this, and he'll rip that sithcursed voice from your throat."

He delivers a sharp kick to Obi-Wan's ankle. "Remove yourself from my _sight!_ You truly disgust me with your very presence, vile thing."

Obi-Wan stands. His feet quickly eat up the sand between himself and the Temple.

 _Blast it, Anakin! How did that happen? He heard you!_

 _No, he heard_ you.

 _I didn't say anything. You... it was you who thought that..._

 _But you said it_.

Had he? Obi-Wan can't remember moving his lips, but as he thinks on the moment, finds he can't remember at all what was said before Rothas lashed out at him.

Understanding trickles uneasily down his spine, trailed by wonder, and then a rush of indignation.

Anakin's light pulses unevenly. _I'm tired, Master_.

 _You made me say that_ , Obi-Wan presses. _That isn't right_.

 _It's not wrong if it's true_... Anakin's rapidly declining glow sparks a sudden shower of embers. _I hate him!_

 _He is despicable, but don't do—whatever it is that you did—again_.

Anakin simmers, and by the time Obi-Wan is back in his cell, his padawan has fallen asleep.

Obi-Wan falls upon his pallet and groans in pain and pleasure as he stretches his stiff limbs.

He closes his eyes. Instead of sleep, he falls into his thoughts.

With Anakin resting, the world where their minds are joined is a quiet system with a dormant sun. Obi-Wan feels small, just a dwarfling world following an orbit around a gargantuan luminescence, his surface icing over without Anakin's radiant heat.

The fact that Anakin possesses twice the midi-chlorians as him has never been more apparent. While Anakin seems nearly on the cusp of being able to look through Obi-Wan's _eyes_ , Obi-Wan doesn't have much perception of Anakin's sensate reality, perhaps for lack of trying—it seems overwhelming to, in effect, be both Anakin and himself at the same time.

And very invasive—Anakin has _spoken_ through him. Taken _control_ of him.

Obi-Wan cannot begin to imagine how such a thing is possible, and worse yet, isn't sure how to keep it from happening again.

He takes a deep breath. Bit by bit he lets that unsettling thought go.

As he is just beginning to sink into sleep, a hum vibrates his eardrums.

Obi-Wan slits his eyes open. Finding nothing amiss in his cell, he turns onto his side and mashes his ear into the pallet.

The buzz grows insistent. A call. A cry. It spawns a sudden restless urge that builds in his heart.

Obi-Wan sits up with the overwhelming impulse to _fix_ something. His fingers claw into his thin pants.

 _What is it?_ he wonders urgently. _What is it?_

His bond with Anakin resonates like a plucked electroharp string. Something at the center vibrates rapidly as if a bogey in a spice spider's web.

Obi-Wan's mind darts to this Disturbance.

There, is a small sphere of brilliance. It seems to sense Obi-Wan and wobbles excitedly within its trellis of glowing strands. Its presence is familiar yet perfectly new.

Obi-Wan presses his mind to this small sun. An unconquerable force runs free of his heart as they connect, galaxy-ending in magnitude, spacetime in scope.

 _Love_.

There, is his child.

* * *

Rain comes to Sathur.

Obi-Wan shivers in his excavation pit. The constant wind touches his thin wet skin in unwelcome brushes of icy fingers. Each plunge of his vibrospade sprays him with sand until even his tattoo is hidden under clumps of black grit. The metal handle slips in his numb hands so often Obi-Wan's sure he's only several lunges away from impaling his own foot.

Yet, this morning he was allowed food. His voice is still intact, for all the time he's allowed to use it.

Today, Obi-Wan's chosen to ignore the immense crystal near him for a patch of finger-sized kyber. He doesn't relish the tension between him and the crooked Jedi across the pits—Rothas seems absolutely dour, his gloved knuckles sharply clenched around his umbrella wand, his face tilted in Obi-Wan's direction. Even from a distance Obi-Wan can see his contorted countenance.

Obi-Wan doesn't need his suspicion.

Especially now.

 _Hello, little one_.

A dimension away, Obi-Wan hasn't wavered from the tiny wonder of light. The touch of its small mind is raw, searing, and the greatest thing he's ever beheld. At times it buzzes so strongly it's a miracle it doesn't manage to free itself from all the strings of energy holding it tight and safe. The waves of comfort Obi-Wan sends it always calm its struggle, and Anakin as well—the baby is active at night and kicks and rolls inside of him.

Obi-Wan wishes he was with Anakin.

Warmth encases him. _You are with me, Master_.

 _I want to see you._ He wants to feel where their child grows in the flesh as it does in the Force. Obi-Wan knows it's wrong of him—such desires are treacherous.

But in this very moment he can't think of anything else he'd rather have.

Obi-Wan picks out little pieces of living crystal from the rock and holds them tight. They warm in his slick palm—a testament to the Light he's always drawn from. _I apologize, Anakin, I'm... I'm weak_...

 _No, Master, you are the strongest Jedi I know. And you're a good man. You always do the right thing_. Anakin pauses. _I'm sorry that_ —

"Thing!"

Obi-Wan jumps at the shrieking voice and his vibrospade and crystals fall to the ground. He turns to see Rothas.

"Pick those _up!"_ Rothas screams. "Hurry up! Master Pycen wishes to speak to you and you're wasting his time, you greedy mynock!"

Obi-Wan sweeps up the crystals with a sigh. This cannot mean anything pleasant. He wonders if Rothas has made good on his prior threat to have Pycen strip his voice from him again. He doesn't know how such a thing is possible. Had Pycen used the Force to silence him? Or was it a clinical operation?

Obi-Wan can only dismally hope it won't be like the tattooing.

He holds out the kyber to Rothas. Suddenly, the crystals are scalding hot in his palms. Their song lowers into a harsh drone, and then lengthens into a piercing, unmistakable _scream_.

Obi-Wan's eyes widen.

The pale Jedi hisses. "I don't want _those!"_ He smacks Obi-Wan's hand away, spilling the crystals on the ground all over again.

"You're _useless!_ Sith hells!" Rothas gestures sharply to his astromech. He's nearly frothing at the mouth. "Get _over_ here, Arthree. Pick these things up and get them wrapped."

Obi-Wan feels sorry for the poor monochromatic droid that cautiously wheels over. Its paint is chipping off and wet sand has gummed up its treads.

Rothas marches Obi-Wan to Pycen's office in seething silence. Obi-Wan keeps to the front as the Shamed are instructed, Rothas a swarming presence at his back. Obi-Wan senses something is making him very nervous.

Obi-Wan stops at the precipice of green carpet, looking down at his muddy feet. "Come in," Pycen's brisk tone resounds ahead of him. "It needs to be cleaned anyway."

Obi-Wan steps in. He turns to see if Rothas will be attending this little meeting, but the pale Jedi just stands for a few moments in the doorway, his eyes slits, snorting hard breaths, before he lets out a growl and leaves them.

Pycen waves his hand and the door seals shut.

Him and Obi-Wan regard each other. With his pure robes, sharp beard, and calm composure, Pycen is everything he used to be.

"Do you know why the Order sends Jedi to this place, Kenobi?"

This question gives Obi-Wan pause. He remembers Pycen's cruel trick with the water when he first arrived.

As if sensing his thoughts, Pycen raises a long hand. "Just answer truthfully."

"Well, Master," Obi-Wan says slowly, "to become closer to the Force, to observe it without distraction. To rise above the flesh and adhere totally to the Order's tenets. To keep us from the Dark Side."

Pycen's lips stretch into an emotionless smile. "Does it?"

Obi-Wan thinks of the wraiths on the sand. Sunken faces holding hopeless eyes. Bloody hands and no hair to hide them from the rain. "We are kept from passion and greed, certainly."

Pycen stands and crosses to his panoramic window. He folds his hands within his sleeves and stares out at the Kursing Sea. "Passion," Pycen says. "Yes, giving into fleshly passions is surely a path to the Dark Side. Quite a few of you here have fallen from such simple temptation. It leaves a peculiar mark—you all wear similar scars upon your souls."

Pycen looks over his shoulder at him. "I know of your crime, the confession from your own lips."

Obi-Wan looks down at the verdant carpet.

"One thing that is always true of all who arrive here, is that they wear the taint of the Dark Side," Pycen continues. "But just the start. Just a spot of decay on a tooth. One that might be reversed with proper cleansing. Rothas and I are particularly adept at sensing this rot and its progression. That's why we've been assigned to this Temple."

Pycen's head lowers. "But as I'm sure you know, to Rothas every dot of decay is a gaping cavity. I apologize on his behalf for his treatment of you—yet, these anomalies that have manifested around you have made me question my own perceptions. They are destructive, yet seem devoid of Darkness. And there is another oddity."

Obi-Wan looks at him.

"When you arrived here there was no decay in your signature," Pycen says. "Your soul was bright. It was inconceivable to me how Obi-Wan Kenobi could plunge to the droves of the Disgraced. Yet, the Council assured me you _had_ committed the selfish act you confessed to."

Obi-Wan stays silent.

"Much seems out of place," Pycen remarks. "Your padawan, none other than Anakin Skywalker, bears the fruit of your depraved union. The Chosen One, foretold to bring balance to the Force... You were his master, do you think this prophecy holds water still?"

"Yes," Obi-Wan says at length. "There is no question Anakin is the most powerful Forceful the Order has ever known, and he fills all the Prophecy's requisites. I trust that my master was correct in his conclusion... through all that has come to pass."

"Yet, Master Jinn left _you_ to train Skywalker."

"Well, he wasn't omniscient."

Pycen scoffs a laugh. "Perhaps not." He turns around. There is something unreadable in his pale blue eyes. "And perhaps, you haven't done what you've confessed to."

Obi-Wan frowns. "I did," he says measuredly. "That's why I'm here."

Pycen shakes his head sharply. "I've worked here a very long time, Kenobi. Don't think me young." His vulturine eyes flash. "I cannot find the Darkness within you. You aren't polluted by passion or ensnared by selfishness. And these strange anomalies in the Force surrounding you... I've never witnessed anything like it."

"I don't know how to explain that," Obi-Wan says, keeping his voice even. He hopes Pycen isn't so adept he can tell when others lie. Though from a certain point of view, it's not a lie at all.

Pycen's jaw works as he stares at him, his eyes switching between Obi-Wan's own. Any kind of geniality has seeped from his gaze. "I don't believe you," Pycen tells him. "If you just tell the truth, I can arrange for your admittance back to Coruscant."

Whispers touch Obi-Wan's ears and he shakes his head rapidly and flexes his disciplined wrist to push Anakin's arguments away. He meets Pycen's calculating stare. "In that case, I wish I had lied."

"Something is amiss," Pycen says, studying Obi-Wan carefully. "I _will_ know what it is."

* * *

The little sun grows. It swells large in its fastenings tying it to their bond. It thrums with electric life.

More than ever, Obi-Wan understands why the Order doesn't allow its members children. He can't deny his growing attachment to the youngling. They're yet a developing soul, but he would fight any war for them.

No matter the makings of their conception.

He wonders if they will be a boy or a girl. Which one of them they will take after.

He wonders what they will make of this strange galaxy.

 _All my love_ , Obi-Wan whispers to that tiny glowing sphere in the long nights, running his fingers over his own sunken belly, imagining what it must be like to feel such a being move within him. He thinks of how big Anakin must be now, heavy with their child.

Perfect.

His groin stirs. Obi-Wan squeezes his eyes shut and moves onto his stomach to trap his hands safely beneath him. It's merely some sort of animal response to procreating. Obi-Wan had separated himself from his alphan gender years ago and can certainly rise above these primitive urges now.

 _I feel something sinister in the air, Master_ , Anakin says between his ears.

Obi-Wan starts, and quickly snaps all his thoughts close to himself. _You were asleep_.

 _I'm so tired, but it's hard to sleep for long. I feel restless. I hope it is just the baby, but something is coming. I've been having the nightmares more often now_.

Obi-Wan curls his fingers under himself. He truly hopes Anakin didn't spy the thoughts he was having moments ago.

 _What happens in them?_ he asks Anakin. Obi-Wan rarely dreams and thinks nothing of them, but he needs to focus Anakin away from his indecent imaginings.

Anakin flares. _Death_.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N:** hey guys, here is part eight, a long chapter and probably long awaited too. I admit I am having a hard time with this fic with all the editing it needs and rewrites. It's a lot of work, and I'm struggling with depression so bad it's hard to even get out of bed in the morning. I will probably not be updating for a couple weeks as I deal with this. It would really encourage me to work on this story if anyone who likes it lets me know. thank you so much if you do. I will reply to everyone, either on here or on AO3, or you can message me on my tumblr about whatever you want. In the meantime I will be on tumblr so if you ever want to know what's up with me you can find me on there. thank you to everyone who's still reading, send me some light if you can :)

here are the links, just remove the spaces and fill in the dots.

thatsakitkat dot tumblr dot com

archiveofourown dot org /users/thatsakitkat

thank you everyone

* * *

The rains taper into a misty fog. It's through this dense cloud Obi-Wan shields his eyes at the milky shiplights growing closer to him. He can just see the shadow of the ship against the night sky, some sort of small freighter flying across the excavation pits. He hadn't seen the ship lift off from the Temple, but it's the only place it could've come from.

Ion drives roar over him and out over the Kursing.

Obi-Wan rasps his fingers over the short stubble a service droid hasn't taken a vibrorazor to the last few days. It's been an odd week entirely, a curious break in monotony.

As him and the rest of the Shameful watch the starship climb into the sky, the silence is black and still. Only a whisper of wind blows Obi-Wan's face as the sea laps at the dark sands.

"Get back to work," a clipped voice intones from behind him, and Obi-Wan turns to see Pycen. He's never watched over them in the pits before, which leaves Rothas as the one manning the freighter.

Pycen stares at the ship's fading light trail, the hem of his white cloak dirtied with grit.

Slowly, his cold eyes fall upon Obi-Wan.

The Force moves, hot along his scalp, and Obi-Wan hurriedly draws his shields tight. He fumbles for his vibrospade.

As he immerses himself once more into unearthing a hefty piece of kyber crystal, Pycen thankfully loses interest in him. His searing Force presence recedes, and leaves only the cool air.

 _That hurt_ , Anakin whispers. His light churns with curious agitation. _It burned_.

 _What in sith hells does he want?_ Obi-Wan darts a look over his shoulder, deeply unsettled.

 _He's envious of your power_. Anakin holds himself off from their link. Scant feelings still sluice down from him—uncertainty and fascination edged in fear. _His Force signature is strange_.

 _Perhaps they are only near-humans after all_. Obi-Wan rolls the enormous living crystal into its chromasheath cover. He sits next to his find, his muscles already aching at the concept of lifting it from his pit, let alone carrying it to the droids.

The air still smells of ionic exhaust. He breathes softly and looks at the skinny spires of the Temple, tall enough to yet loom over him in his trench, and wonders where the ship is kept.

* * *

The next few days Obi-Wan is awash with worry that knows no true cause. Eyes itch at his back. He's always swinging a look over his shoulder, even in his own cell.

The simple excuse is he's become paranoid over Anakin's nightmares, but he feels there is something wrong in the Force itself.

In the shroud of fog over the kyber pits, he whispers to another Shameful, "Do you sense a Disturbance?"

Obi-Wan's fellow Disgrace shakes his head rapidly before Obi-Wan even finishes the question. The other man covers his mouth and gestures with desperate eyes to Rothas, who had returned sometime yesterday while Obi-Wan took his allotted weekly pass under the sonics.

"He can't see us in this fog, you know." Obi-Wan leans in closer.

The other Shameful scrambles away from him and falls on his bony back.

Obi-Wan picks up the other man's vibrospade. The Shameful looks at him from the ground, rubbing his head. Obi-Wan makes sure he watches as he makes a show of scanning the pit, as he drives his shovel into the magmatic rock between them, as he quickly gouges through it just enough to expose the nose of a huge hunk of kyber.

The other man sits up all the way at Obi-Wan's discovery and looks at the living crystal with wide eyes, _hungry_ eyes—this piece of kyber is probably large enough to earn him six extra servings.

Obi-Wan offers him back his vibrospade.

The man doesn't take it. It hangs in the stiff air. The other Shameful's wide eyes have slimmed in suspicion and his pale lips are pursed tight.

"It's not a trick," Obi-Wan says. "You can have it. It's yours."

The man still stares at him. Then he tilts his head. "You're Obi-Wan Kenobi," he croaks, then looks around wildly as if expecting a strike from the heavens.

Before Obi-Wan can answer, the Shameful grits his teeth and slaps his own discipline several times. Fresh blood ekes out over his skeletal fingers.

Obi-Wan lets out a breath. He carefully lays down the man's vibrospade next to the crystal he revealed, and then slips away through the fog and back to his own task.

 _Damn this place_ , he thinks swing-to-swing. Tears crest in his eyes. They fly off his face and hit the ground in hot drops. They're almost soothing on his cold water-starved skin.

He can stop them no more than he could've stopped anything that's happened this year. The old mantras crumble uselessly on his tongue.

He is _not_ a Jedi.

He _is_ scared.

He _is_ losing his mind.

Filaments of warmth stretch around him. Obi-Wan falls to his knees and lets himself tumble into Anakin's embrace.

 _No_ , Anakin whispers within him. Surrounding him. All of him. _You are right here. I have you, Master_.

Obi-Wan clutches Anakin's light to him and presses him close. Obi-Wan presses his face to the rock and continues to weep. The crystals sing gently to him.

 _Something is wrong, Anakin_.

 _Do you have nightmares as well?_

 _I sense something. Something awful. It's here on the island. Can you feel it?_

 _I feel your fear. It is real_. Anakin thrums tremulously. _What could this be?_

Something cold touches Obi-Wan's shoulder.

He blinks and looks up. A startled gasp cuts from his lungs when he sees someone standing over him. He quickly scuttles further into the pit.

He stops, breathing hard, when he sees it's the Disgrace from earlier. The man is standing there corpselike, wearing tattered clothing and the fog. A mountain of a crystal is cradled like a child in his arms, its chromasheath wrap far too small to fold around it completely.

And the man looks just as frightened as Obi-Wan.

"Sorry," Obi-Wan says lightly. "You just startled me, no worries. That's quite a large crystal."

"Yes," the man rasps. Tendons beneath his papery skin flex as he hugs it all the tighter.

"You can have it," Obi-Wan says again. "Enjoy your meals."

The Shameful nods. He shifts on his feet and works his jaw. Obi-Wan can hear his breath coming in hectic rushes through his nose. Dark eyes scan him, the pit, and then the man turns his head to look over his shoulder.

Several times.

When he finally walks to Obi-Wan, his steps are even and quick. The man kneels next to where Obi-Wan lies and inclines his mouth to his ear. "I saw it."

The very air seems to vibrate in terror.

Obi-Wan's breath catches in his throat and threatens to choke him. "What? What did you see?"

"They brought it into the Temple," the Disgrace says quickly. He stops there and darts his head around once more.

"Brought what? What was it?"

"A creature. Big!" he whispers fiercely, making Obi-Wan jump. "It slithered on the ground. Awful. Awful. Never seen such a monster before. Never want to see it again!"

Before Obi-Wan can ask anything else, the other Shameful stands and races out of the pit, taking no care of the crystal weighing him down. He falls, but scrabbles back to his feet as if pursued by a pack of anoobas.

Obi-Wan lies there, digesting the man's words. It seems odd a strange alien could cause such a Disturbance in the Force...

His heart is beating fast. Obi-Wan covers his chest, spreading his fingers over his black tattoo. He tries to remember that pain and not sink under the tsunami of anxiety rolling through him.

He feels into the Force. Much of the time, Anakin and its energy seem as one. Obi-Wan finds the strands where it retains its identity, the threads that came long before Anakin.

Even as he attempts to listen and know, his breath quickens and his heart thrashes. _I feel as if I will perish any moment!_

 _Don't say that, Master_.

The Force, as ever, is in flux. In its roiling body Obi-Wan finds nothing for his alarm. Only the Disturbance, a gravity well in the Force's energy cosmos.

He does not sleep that night.

* * *

 _Our child is coming soon_.

 _Are you sure?_

 _Yes. The Healers are telling me a couple more weeks, but I feel it. A few days more_. Shafts of cold light shoot from Anakin's presence. _I'm afraid, Master. And not of the pain. I hope the child will be all right. What if the Council tells me they can't be trained? Where will they go?_

Obi-Wan stares at his cell door. He's sensed something beyond it the last few hours, but nothing, not even the service droid supposed to bring his meals at this time, has entered.

 _Obi-Wan?_

 _That isn't likely, Anakin_ , Obi-Wan tells him. _Our child will be very strong with the Force. I think they have much to do with my new capabilities—the Force seems closer than ever. Don't you feel this strength?_

 _Sometimes. I don't have much opportunity to use the Force, outside of grossly exploiting it to support my own indolence_. Anakin brightens with mirth, but dims just as quickly. _I'm tired so much, Obi-Wan. Even doing little things exhausts me. And I'm so weighed down. I've gotten bigger robes, but they don't hide it very well. Everyone in the Temple stares... and some of them don't keep their thoughts to themselves_.

 _I'm sorry, padawan_. Obi-Wan sends him a wave of warmth. _It will be over soon_.

The door hisses open.

Obi-Wan scrambles across his pallet and presses his back to the wall. Fear ices his spine straight.

All the light beyond the door is obliterated by Rothas and Pycen's tall forms. The black-robed Jedi's plasma pike is at the ready and cold yellow energy flickers in the shadows the cell's glowplate doesn't reach.

It hums as horribly as those needles did the last time they came to Obi-Wan's cell.

"Come, Kenobi," Pycen says.

Obi-Wan stays exactly where he is.

If he wanted to, he could not move.

He expects Rothas to scream at his disobedience and spear a saber blade through his heart, but the pale Jedi just looks at him from across the room. His eyes are smug. Shifting lights and shadows wax and wane a smile on his blisteringly red mouth.

Panic ignites fiercer and hotter than ever before in Obi-Wan's breast as the two Jedi near him. "What do you want?" he asks, twisting between their black and white-gloved hands on his arms with hardly the breath to speak. "What do you _want?"_

Pycen grips his chin between two synthleather fingers. "Why do you _fear?"_ Pycen asks. "I thought you had nothing to hide."

Rothas hisses, "We know better than that, thing."

Obi-Wan looks helplessly between their two fair faces, their twin pairs of cruel eyes. His heart pushes at his ribs. There's an awful bubble culminating deep in his gut.

They force him to walk, of course. He doesn't know how, but he's watching his own feet step over the floor, watching his tendons flex, trying to think of nothing. This is it. _This_ is what he sensed. It's happening now. And he can do nothing. He can do _nothing_.

 _Think of nothing_ —

 _Think of the creature_ —

 _No!_

They must be taking him to get another tattoo. Some of the Shameful have many. It's going to be excruciating, but it's a known pain and he's survived it before. The pins will—

His vision pulses.

 _Think of nothing!_

He's in a dark room now. He can't see. It's the darkness again, alone in the dark, starving in the dark _nothing_ —

The white-robed Jedi forces Obi-Wan into a large chair. Him and Rothas are only shadows in the ill light, two sets of gleaming eyes.

Obi-Wan peers up at the ceiling, straining to see the needled contraption they used last time, yet sees nothing looming above him.

But that doesn't mean anything. It could come from the floor or the chair itself or maybe now his fingernails will be pried off one after another.

Something moves in his peripheral vision. He looks there, but sees only blackness.

Cold clamps around his wrists. He flexes his bones up against the durasteel restraints and drives the edge of his discipline into the metal, but not even the pins stabbing into his flesh abate his terror.

A rolling noise moves towards him. Obi-Wan follows it to his right side, where it stops. He blinks rapidly and listens to his own breath hissing through his nose.

A blue glow explodes the darkness.

 _"Ah!"_ A massive headache blooms red in Obi-Wan's skull and his connection to the Force breaks. Blood erupts from his nose and falls warm over his lips and chin.

Obi-Wan lifts his heavy head and squints at his right side. A crystalline, conical object blinks at him. Its deep blue body sits on a mobile stand and rests on top of an ornate plate patterned with some sort of odd, warped lettering—he can barely look at the object as it pinches the world around it.

An ancient relic, a horribly powerful one, but Obi-Wan's never seen anything of its sort in the Hall of Artifacts.

He looks away and groans. His stomach tosses and turns. "What is this?" he slurs. He closes his eyes tight and tries to lean away from the object, his wrists banging the inside of the clamps. Blood drips down onto his thighs.

"The Cone of Separation." Familiar cool fingers pinch Obi-Wan's chin. He turns his bleeding eyes up to Pycen's swimming shadow. "The Council didn't want to let this artifact go," Pycen says softly. "But they saw reason. There's always reason in the quest for truth. Truth is _Light_."

 _"What?"_

The yellow shaft of a shoto blade carves the darkness a hairsbreadth before Obi-Wan's eyeball. Rothas sneers down at him. "Didn't we tell you we would expose the mystery of your Dark powers, thing?"

Obi-Wan looks from him to Pycen. Mixed with yellow light, Pycen's eyes are as green as his office's carpets.

"No," Obi-Wan murmurs, sluggishly sliding his heels on the floor. "No, no, I told you already. You said I was—"

"Not of the Dark Side? That your soul was bright?" Pycen scoffs. "These aren't truths. That is your trickery. I can only assume you're powerful enough to conceal yourself and my perception is only the one you want me to see. You are an unknown. A shadow."

"A _Sith!"_ Rothas screams.

Obi-Wan's head rings. He snaps his chin from Pycen's hold but Pycen snatches his short hair instead and jerks Obi-Wan towards him. Rothas's blade cuts a line under his eye he hardly feels.

When Pycen's voice comes again, his breath waves over Obi-Wan's wet skin. "You know, I did not even think this little cone could do anything to you after what you did to our Mitha," Pycen hisses at him. "I have doubts it's working even now. That your Dark power isn't lying in wait somewhere."

"You are a fool," Obi-Wan spits. "This place does nothing but drive people mad. Your mind has been twisted." He looks up at Rothas. "The one who calls me Sith must surely be one himself."

"You—"

"You're no Jedi!" Obi-Wan shouts at Rothas. His head pulsates. Blood comes from his ears. "You enjoy the suffering of others. You have no compassion in your heart, only cruelty. You blaspheme our Code!"

"Shut _up_ , thing!"

Obi-Wan is drawing breath to yell once more when Pycen's fingers jab under his jaw. Something constricts his throat. "The crystals know you are _evil!"_ Obi-Wan screams, but his words never touch the air. He screams them again, but he can only make several short clicks with his frozen vocal cords.

Thin peals of laughter shred the air. "Pycen! It looks like a stupid glurpfish trying to talk!"

Obi-Wan gnashes his teeth together and trembles. His nails scrape the arms of his chair.

"Enough," Pycen says shortly. He turns to the side of the room laid in shadow. "Is it ready?"

"I don't know." Rothas shifts on his feet, darting glances into the darkness. "I don't speak its stupid language."

"Just bring it over here."

The gleam of Rothas's eyes settle in the corner. Obi-Wan's staring there too, at odd, swirling shapes in the lack of light.

There is the Disturbance. It isn't the artifact, but whatever sits in the dark.

 _It slithered on the ground. Awful_.

 _Awful_.

The creature.

The bor gullet.

Obi-Wan's breath whines from his blood-clogged nose. Pycen is speaking, maybe, the shadow of his mouth is shaping words, but Obi-Wan doesn't hear them. And as his heartbeats lengthen, he doesn't even see them.

He falls deep into his mind.

 _Anakin?_

Without the entirety of the Force tying them together, they are adrift, but not wholly apart. They are still bound together by the teeth in Obi-Wan's skin.

By blood.

Several strands of their bond are still brilliantly lit. Obi-Wan follows them and finds Anakin and their child, so far away and so safe.

 _What is this?_ Anakin asks, his voice only a sibilant gust of wind. Obi-Wan senses Anakin's laid against the barrier since it erected, and nearly has to abandon him as Anakin uselessly rends the Force to try to reach him. _Are you dying? Are you dying?_

 _Listen to me, Anakin. Something terrible is about to happen. They want to break into my mind. Pycen and Rothas, they think I'm—_

 _Obi-Wan? Are you there? Are you there?_ The wind wonders. _Where are you? I'll help you. I'll kill them_.

 _You can't. My Force connection is being cut off by an artifact from the Temple. This, this Cone of Separation... and a bor gullet creature... there's nothing I can do to stop this_.

 _Master_ —

Something hard impacts Obi-Wan's face and brings him back into his skin.

He opens his eyes to the monstrous entity in front of him. It completely dominates his vision, a horror from some primordial era. Milky eyes gawk from either side of its formless face. From its bulbous center stretch heavy purple tentacles, their spade-shaped ends undulating around its girth.

One of them is lying warm over Obi-Wan's feet.

Obi-Wan gasps and jerks away, but his spine only hits the unyielding back of the chair.

There's nowhere to go.

Pycen holds him by his hair. "Carefully note what I'm about to tell you, Kenobi. The more you keep from the bor gullet the deeper it will go into your mind. If your sanity is dear to you, don't hide from it."

 _Don't hide from it_ , the wind whispers.

 _What?_ Obi-Wan mouths. His mind is too weak to reach for Anakin's again. He can only hold tight to the threads of him.

A greasy tentacle loops up Obi-Wan's leg. He kicks out on pure reflex in revulsion, but the lengthy limb swiftly climbs up his thigh and slides wetly up his belly.

He can do nothing now but watch it advance to his own ruination. Without the Force and without Anakin, all the world has fallen away.

The foul serpentine limb crests Obi-Wan's chest and worms up his cheek.

Obi-Wan claws his fingers tight into the arms of the chair.

He closes his eyes.

Its intrusion is like no other. Obi-Wan puts up no shields and the monster's tendrils sink unfathomably deep into his brain, pushing, working, coiling cold in the dark parts. Everything Obi-Wan tries to wrest from its gaze blows in so much desert dust from his hands. All the secrets he attempts to expunge into unmemory only fall into a dark current channeling back to the creature. Things he's forgotten spread into his mindscape, little bits of life stamped on frames to be eagerly read by the alien as if flimsiplast novels.

All passes under its black examination. All is known.

The bor gullet comes to the precious threads of his and Anakin's bond. It _stares_ at it, the glowing gossamer strings tethering him to Anakin across all the cold parsecs of space.

An abominable, otherworldly desire burbles in Obi-Wan's membranes. A primitive instinct to _know_. This alien urge encompasses him and suffocates him and flattens him in his own mind.

An icy feeler whips out and squeezes their link for an awful, agonizing instant. But it recoils at once. A strange pain shoots through Obi-Wan and he twists with it, but it's not really his, it's not really pain—he has no real capacity to understand the creature's alien response.

It delves impossibly deeper into him, pushing closer to the lure of vulnerable filaments with reckless instinct.

Far away, blood bursts from Obi-Wan's nose and ears. Vessels in his eyes break and pinkened tears slide down his cheeks. Their saline sting burns the bor gullet's flesh and the tips of its tentacles suckered to Obi-Wan's temples let go of his skin—

—the monster latches firmly back onto his face, overfilling his mind once more. It propels towards his and Anakin's coupling with insatiable craving, its sole lust to know where all the fine fibers end.

 _Stop_ , Obi-Wan begs it. _I'm not fighting you. You know everything. YOU HAVE EVERYTHING!_

But it does not.

The bor gullet lunges for their bond and its tender precious strands. It fixes itself deep into the connective cords and turns their glow dim and then churning black.

 _DON'T!_

The beast ruthlessly surges forward.

Towards Anakin.

 _NO!_ Obi-Wan howls.

The bor gullet's presence shoots from his mind.

In its absence a burst of energy pops and charges Obi-Wan's synapses. His disoriented mind turns over several times before striking itself after the monster.

The pathway between himself and Anakin is clogged as if with tar, starved from the Force and deadened by the creature's relentless propulsion. Everything in Obi-Wan revolts at wrenching himself through it, only a single flame of desperation searing in his breast, burning brighter than the hot heart of a red quasar.

Anakin will fight the alien's invasion of his mind as surely and as fiercely as he fights all else and end up mad for it. Obi-Wan's only hope is to distract the bor gullet from him somehow, to keep the creature's attention from Anakin and the mind of their child—an embryonic consciousness Obi-Wan _knows_ the monster will find itself drawn to defile.

A faint, airy voice finally drifts down to him. Obi-Wan cannot understand Anakin at all, crushed at all sides by their corrupted bond and now the mounting pressure in his own head as he struggles to continue any further, let alone remember _who he is_ —

Trapped inside their congested, tainted connection, Obi-Wan feels the Force _shiver_. It shudders through him like a blown candleflame.

Suddenly, the bor gullet is racing back towards him, its hellish form bearing down on Obi-Wan in a giant rolling ball of fire.

Obi-Wan starts to retreat, his skull splitting as he tries to work backwards through the duracrete mire his bond has become.

He's not fast enough.

The creature's foreign mind crashes into his. All else floods from Obi-Wan except a sense of torturous, boiling pain. The enormity of it scorches him from the inside out.

The monster violently rips its suckers from his skin.

Obi-Wan jolts, his eyes flinging wide open to find the bor gullet writhing in front of him. Gasping billows of smoke rise from its purple flesh. Obi-Wan's hearing weaves in and out of deafness under a sharp shrieking scream vibrating the very atoms of his body. His eyes tear with blood and water and his teeth shake in their gums.

Light bursts to life before him, the yellow glow of lightsaber blades filling the sides of his vision. Beneath the blurry film of his eyes two other shapes move—Pycen, Rothas, the both of them agape at the beast's anguished throes.

Its monstrous body teems and tosses over itself and then seizes like a poisoned spice spider. Its many long limbs splay in the air and convulse in abject agony. Terribly, inexplicably, Obi-Wan smells its skin _cooking_.

One sizzling arm surges towards him. It welts his chest then contorts and whips wildly to the side.

The crystal Cone of Separation flies from its stand to Obi-Wan's feet, where it shatters instantly into two clean halves. Its blue glow sputters out.

The Force roars through the room, expanding brilliantly and sweeping Obi-Wan up into its boundless pinions.

The bor gullet gives two last horrific heaves and dies. Its blistered tentacles shrink close to its body, clenching tight with rigor.

"You _worthless_ thing!" Rothas wails, and furiously sets his pike upon the dead creature. He slices its limbs at their roots and then butchers its bulging body into purple portions of steaming viscera.

Blood and other wretched liquids stipple Obi-Wan's face. His breath wheezes in and out of his nose as he trembles, his discipline shaking against the durasteel clamp a constant _clink clink_.

Pycen steps around the bor gullet's spilt innards, the train of his white cloak dragging in the pooling carnage. He toes a carved cut of flesh with his boot, examining the shreds of scalded skin. "It's impossible," he says under his breath. "Impossible."

His flinty stare turns to Obi-Wan, cautious and yet still curious. "How did you do this?" His eyes narrow as they scan Obi-Wan, as if looking for some secret switch. "What _are_ you?"

"Who karking cares, Pycen!" Rothas screams, lifting his plasma blades from his slaughter. He shifts his attention to Obi-Wan, his teeth caging tight in a rageful grimace.

With a sharp motion of his black-gloved hand, Rothas cleans the floor of the creature. Gallons of hot blood and pounds of fried, gelatinous flesh pour over Obi-Wan in a miserable torrent of gore. Intestines curl around his neck and ankles and other nameless internal organs blanket his lap in spongy stacks of tissue. The bor gullet's severed tentacles tumble over his shoulders to quickly pile up on him and around him, drowning him in a soaking mound of meat.

"That's just what you wanted, isn't it, _thing?"_

Obi-Wan can't scream. He sucks a breath into his cringing lungs and keeps gulping air.

The Force fills him to the absolute brim.

In the night, a comet streaks towards him.

 _MASTER_.

A nova erupts in Obi-Wan's mind. A shockwave of Force spills from his body and rocks the bloodslick floor.

"Damn it all!" Rothas cries, stumbling backwards. "Just kill it, Pycen! Just _kill_ it!"

"No," Pycen says, nearly lost under the rumbling. "No, wait, I _need_ to—"

The air trembles.

Hunks of purple flesh entombing Obi-Wan's body begin to stretch outwards as if pulled away by invisible hands. Anakin's raging light stretches to the far corners of his mind. It leaps up over Obi-Wan and takes the breath from his body. He feels an uncomfortable, hot clamping in his skull and drives his wrists against his restraints.

Rothas growls. He twists his pike and steps towards Obi-Wan. "Then I'll do it!"

 _"No!"_ Pycen unfurls his own articulated lightsaber and crosses in front of Obi-Wan.

" _Move_ , Pycen!" Rothas shrieks, rearing back his weapon dangerously. "How dare you protect that tainted thing? Have you been so manipulated by its Dark influence you'll raise your blades against your own twin?"

"You cannot kill Kenobi! Have you not paid attention tonight? It's so much more than what we thought." The bloodied hem of Pycen's cloak flutters wetly over Obi-Wan's feet as the temperature of the room drops and an unearthly wind twists the air.

Over Pycen's shoulder, Rothas's eyes meet Obi-Wan's and narrow to white slits of black intent.

"No, it's exactly what I thought," he says, and draws his saber back over his shoulder to aim a burning yellow blade for Obi-Wan's head.

 _"Don't!"_

Plasma pikes clash and dazzle Obi-Wan with coruscating light.

Anakin squeezes his being tighter until his fingers and toes lose sensation. It's unmistakable what he's doing. Obi-Wan's felt this Dark power before. Scattered memories of many months ago flit through his struggling mind.

He cannot fight it off now as he did then. His mind is Anakin's as much as it is his own.

Filled only with venomous hatred, Anakin overtakes him.

Anakin opens Obi-Wan's eyes and strains his wrists still caught in durasteel clamps. The metal warps under the pressure of his Force energy and the entire chair splinters under him.

Entrails slop off his shoulders as he stands, and then one bare foot crosses in front of the other with no thought at all.

The floor shudders beneath his steps.

At Rothas's feet lies the slain form of Master Pycen. The Jedi in black stumbles over his body as Anakin eats up the distance between them one inexorable stride after another.

Rothas's red lips are held in a trembling sneer. His hair has slipped from its orange tie and hangs in front of his lowered face, his colorless eyes. "Stay back," he hisses, burning the air with his saber. "You stay _away_ from me, thing."

Anakin stops. He moves Obi-Wan's lips but his tongue rolls against his palate soundlessly. Anakin takes his hand and jabs his fingers under his jaw, pressing hard into his vocal cords. Obi-Wan feels the Force work in odd fits and bursts. It forms and reforms, twisting and pushing on itself as if a puzzle trying to slot itself together.

" _You_ did this!" Rothas shrieks. "You've been at work with our minds. You blinded Pycen to your true, wicked nature and drove him mad with obsession. I tried to tell him what you were but he was too damn _stupid!"_ Rothas kicks Pycen over and over. "To sith hells with him! Damn him! Stars _damn_ him!"

Tears mark Rothas's white skin. He shows his spit-slicked teeth and raises his pike. "I'm not letting you get away with this, thing. I'm going to make sure your Dark stain is wiped from this galaxy as if it never were!"

Rothas charges Obi-Wan, the yellow blades of his saber as high and as brilliant as binary suns.

"You will die, worm," Anakin says in Obi-Wan's lungs, in his head, _everywhere_ —

Anakin reaches out Obi-Wan's hand.

Rothas stops. His lightsaber falls from his hands as they dart up to grip at his throat. His skin blues and red branches his eyes and his hot red lips darken to a shade of violent purple.

Anakin curls Obi-Wan's fist and pulls it in to his chest. Rothas comes with it, his boots scampering for purchase on Pycen's body and finding none. Anakin drags him through the air until he hangs before him.

"St... p..." Rothas says through his clamped teeth, his choked throat. "Th... ing..."

 _Stop it, Anakin! Stop!_

Anakin keeps Obi-Wan's fingers still, cramping with focus and tension.

The Force blasts through the room, cold and cuttingly cruel. Obi-Wan doesn't know how Anakin is doing this.

There seems no end to his power over him.

 _Don't kill him_ , Obi-Wan begs Anakin from the small section in his own mind in which he's been stowed like so much folded clothing.

Can Anakin understand him?

Can such a being understand a man?

Rothas claws at his own throat. His chest heaves with all the breaths he can't take.

"Where's your ship?" Obi-Wan asks, Anakin asks, because it is not Obi-Wan's voice at all, it is an instrument of the Force, and it burns his lungs and lips. "Where is it, _thing?"_

Rothas turns his head from the words, squeezing his eyes shut. " _Ah_." Then he makes a stuttered noise of pain and hisses, "No..."

 _"Tell me!"_

Blood spits from Rothas's nose. His legs kick. "Wh... t... are... y... ou? Wha... t... are... you? For... ce... Force... h... lp... me..."

 _"Now!"_ Anakin screams. "Tell me where, RIGHT NOW! Or I will END you!"

 _He can't breathe! Anakin, please, stop this!_

Anakin loosens Obi-Wan's fingers the slightest amount and some of the blue seeps from Rothas's skin. He draws in several desperate, guttural gasps of air. Anakin floats him closer, so close that Rothas and him share exhales as Anakin breathes through Obi-Wan's lungs.

"Tell me where it is, thing," Anakin says, his voice soft, yet Rothas recoils from the words once more as if slapped, new tears saturating his white eyes. "Speak carefully, I will know if you lie to me."

"You are a Dark thing," Rothas sobs. "It's under the water. In... in Pycen's office there's a lockpad under the window that will open the access lift to the hangar. Code... code twenty-five fifteen fourteen seventeen five fourteen." Rothas squirms in the air. "There! Take that stupid piece of scrap! I don't care! Just let me go!"

"I will," Anakin says, and tightens Obi-Wan's fist.

 _ANAKIN!_

Rothas uses the last bit of breath in his lungs for a low scream. He kicks his legs and shoots an arm out, his fingers splaying towards Obi-Wan.

Anakin waves away the attack with Obi-Wan's other hand, forcing the pins of his discipline into the holes they've burrowed in his wrist. As Anakin stares at the needled adornment, a swell of hate, huge and Dark and poisonous, spills unbridled into the Force.

With a sharp twist of Obi-Wan's hand, Anakin breaks Rothas's neck.

The sick _snap!_ brings boiling acid up Obi-Wan's throat and he fights with Anakin for the possession of his eyes to look away. Rothas's head lies lax and horrifically bent on his shoulder, his milky blond hair cocooning his still face.

Obi-Wan's discipline clatters to the floor in three pieces. His wrist is free of its stabbing needles for the first time in months, but he can only feel Anakin's toxic satisfaction, running through his own veins like a spice high. _Let me go, Anakin_ , he flares. _Let me go this instant_.

The winds of the Force calm and recede. Anakin's being flows from his arms and legs to pool back behind his eyes. In their mindscape, he tugs Obi-Wan from his corner.

Obi-Wan's mind is waiting for him as he left it, sore but seemingly unaltered. He wonders what self there is to return to even as he sinks into the agency over his body. Is it truly as it was before? It cannot be. He cannot be himself any longer.

There is no him.

Obi-Wan collapses to his knees without Anakin to stand him upright. Rothas drops with him into a dead black heap.

Blood is congealing sticky on every inch of Obi-Wan's body, soaked through his pants and crusted around his lips. Little bits of flesh are gummed up under his fingernails and sliced purple pieces of skin litter his arms like scabs. There's a strip of pink intestine stuck to his thigh. As he tries to pull it off, it stretches from his pantleg like elastic chewstim.

Obi-Wan retches, his empty stomach contracting painfully. Bile dribbles from his lips and tears squeeze from his eyes. Anakin gently warms him from within, but Obi-Wan fights the touch of his light, and he is yet Light in this room of death, a carnivorous sun.

 _Obi-Wan_ , Anakin says. _Please come home_.

* * *

The water of the Kursing Sea is cold and inky with grit. Obi-Wan wades into it until the sand drops away under his feet and spreads his arms to swim into a foaming breaker. It lathers over him in the kind of soapy froth that can never be truly replaced by sonics.

He surfaces with a gasp, scrubbing his fingers over the short hair on his face and head. The water is icy enough to blessedly think of nothing else but its freezing grip and the primal urge to cleanse himself of the grime coating his body.

As Sathur's far sun begins to leak wan light over the waters, Obi-Wan walks on the black shores for the last time. Kyber crystals sing beneath his steps, serenading his impending departure from beneath the earth.

He opens Pycen's office with the dead Jedi's keycard and finds the lockpad as described under the wide window. He punches in the turbolift code as Anakin recites it, his eyes wandering over Pycen's desk, skipping over datascreens left unread and a holophoto of him and Rothas blinking at the imager in a forever repeating loop.

The lift takes Obi-Wan to a wide, dark hangar, filled by two colossal pumps and the same freighter he watched fly away from this place a week ago.

Obi-Wan looks listlessly over the array of countless controls, slumped against the cockpit bulkhead. The craft is outdated, from a bygone age when starships were just starting to incorporate hyperdrives, and he isn't sure how to power up the vessel.

He lets his back slide along the cold durasteel to the deck. He's not even wearing shoes and the ship's interior is even more frigid than the hangar it's housed in, lying hidden beneath all the cold gallons of the Kursing Sea.

 _Master, come on!_ Anakin pesters. _Let's get it started. What kind of ship is it?_

 _It appears to be a small freighter_.

 _What model? Show me the controls!_

 _Why don't you just steal my body again and do this yourself!_

 _Maybe I will, if you don't even want to try!_

 _How can I ever return to the Order after this? There will be an investigation here. How can I explain any of this, Anakin?_

 _How can THEY explain any of this? Your child is coming! Don't you want to be here?_ Anakin seethes in Obi-Wan's mind, buffeting him with waves of solar radiation. _I'm sick of the Council's deception! This sithcursed Temple will be abolished and all the Jedi freed. And you will be reinstated as my master. Or I will leave the Order and tell the Republic all about this place. I'll ruin everything for them. They have to listen—they need me. I will MAKE them listen_.

Obi-Wan rests his head in his hands.

He is too tired to weep.

He sits there a long time. Anakin tires and his presence wanes, yet his padawan resolutely stays awake. _If you will not come, Obi-Wan, I'll find out where that place is and fly there myself_.

It's a silly thought, Anakin on this grey world, as far along as he is and with his summery features. A smile comes to Obi-Wan's lips, and he feels again that ache of longing in his chest to see him, to be closer to their child.

He gets up and drops into the pilot's seat.

 _It can only do short hyperspace jumps_ , Anakin laments as Obi-Wan describes the controls, his frustration at such an obsolete craft palpable.

At least, it is simple enough to open the hangar's enormous, top-entry hatch. Cold, dark water roars in through the parting shutters. A safety alert blares and the ship starts to rise under the deluge on an extending platform. Float switches trigger below it, twin mechanical lurches sounding off like blaster shots as the pumps jolt to life and drain the Kursing back into itself.

Several droids have wandered down from Pycen's office and a few of them now try to scramble up the neck of the platform, but Obi-Wan's already finishing the liftoff sequence, Anakin rattling off instructions just as fast as his fingers can flip the switches.

He raises the ship into the free air, holds his breath, and shifts from the freighter's repulsorlift drive to its ion engines.

The ship hurtles out over the excavation pits. They're empty of the spindly white forms of the Disgraced, who will wake this morning to a world without masters.

As Obi-Wan pulls back on the yoke and starts climbing into the air, he wonders what will become of them. He'd crushed the holotransmitter in Pycen's office before he stepped into the lift, leaving the entire population of the island bereft of outside communication.

The only hope for them is to tell the Council and have them transported, hopefully not straight to the Republic Detention Center—surely at least a few of them could be deemed rehabilitated...

Obi-Wan wonders uneasily how long some of them have been on this dark island shoveling kyber. Has there ever been a Shameful allowed back to the High Temple? Was this prospect of redemption just a sham for lifelong alienation and torture, a tier of punishment even above exile?

The ship breaks through Sathur's exosphere. From orbit, the planet is an astounding blue color, its poles dipped in pure white frost.

Obi-Wan looks away and prepares to jump to lightspeed.


End file.
